MTA-NYCT is hiring a Principal Transportation Planner in the Operations Planning Division. Applications are due by May 5, 2014.

The position will be responsible for helping to plan long-term changes to the NYC bus route network.  The incumbent will develop and maintain a database of service and ridership information for planning purposes, prepare reports recommending new or restructured bus routes and services, including ridership projections, customer and operations impacts, and operating costs.  The position may also assist in the analysis and management of various long-range planning studies, such as Alternatives Analyses and Environmental Impact Statements and coordination with other NYCT departments, other MTA agencies, and external contacts.  The successful candidate is expected to do field work throughout New York City and to represent NYC Transit at public meeting, sometimes not during normal business hours.  A NYS driver’s license is required for this position.

Education & Experience:

Bachelors degree in Engineering, Urban Studies, Geography, Transportation Science, Urban Planning, Economics, Business, Public Administration, Political Science or related field and five years of full time paid experience in transportation operations planning, schedule or operations.

Desired Skills:

Excellent writing, communication and graphics presentation skills, proficiency in technical writing and data analysis are required.  Knowledge of the New York City Transit system and New York City are highly desirable.  Previous experience in transportation planning for a large, multimodal transit agency is highly desirable.  Knowledge of transportation planning software such as TransCad, ArcView, MapInfo and Auto-Turn.

Apply here or search listings at http://web.mta.info/mta/employment/employment_out.html

via YPTransportation

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• NYC Job Alert: NYCT Principal Transportation Planner
• Mta Plans To Reduce Subway Deaths 2013
• MTA announces enhanced weekend service on Manhattan, Queens bus routes
• MTA NYC Goes Digital

H/T Bernie Wagenblast

This is vintage gold. The Chevy sponsored short film below helps show road safety from 1930s. Chevrolet also tries to convince us the new safety features of their latest cars make them the safest place to be, showing dramatic accidents to prove their point! Interestingly, the traffic fatalities statistics shows that cars were not actually the safest places to be in that era.  There were 34,494 fatalities recorded in 1935 in the United States, which had a population of 127 million at that time. With 228 billion vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and adjusted fatalities per 100,000 population 27.1, was not an ideally safe environment for travel by car. In comparison, today we have about 34,000 deaths for a population of 314 million, with an VMT of 2,954 billion and adjusted fatalities per 100,000 at 10.833.  Thankfully the technology has come a long way to make the cars safer and we have a few more options than a Chevy to look to for a safer ride. Nonetheless it is pretty cool to see how things were back in the day.

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, the Austrian research institute with European format which focuses on the key infrastructure issues of the future, is looking to strengthen its team in the Department Mobility with the immediate appointment of a PhD Thesis “Perception Based Modeling”

 Job profile:

Over the past years, the “Dynamic Transportation Systems” group within the AIT´s Mobility Department has carried out extensive research in the field of modeling and simulation of human and crowd behavior. The increasing availability of large data sets originating from a broad variety of novel sensor technologies enables to investigate new ways for closing the gap between individual decisions based on context-related perception and the integration of this individual knowledge into mobility simulations. The ultimate goal is to integrate perceptual models with the simulation of movement behavior in train stations, airports and dense urban areas (including shopping areas) in order to optimize mobility flows according to different criteria.

We are seeking an exceptional PhD candidate to fill a sponsored research position involving the development of novel methods to capture and process human perception data as well as to integrate human perception information into mobility simulation tools.

This PhD project will be part of the research collaboration between the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that aspires to advance the state-of-the-art of integrating perception data into simulation models.

Qualifications:

• Passion for finding creative solutions for bridging the gap between the natural and social sciences
• Outstanding master´s degree and proven experience in either computer science, software engineering, applied mathematics or sociology, environmental psychology, transportation research with a strong interest in exploring the synergies between engineering and psychology
• Candidates should have strong, proven knowledge in some of the following areas:
  • Data management (e.g. database systems)
  • Pattern Recognition
  • Mathematical modeling and computer simulation in the field of transportation
  • Good programming skills in Matlab and/or Java
  • Behavior research (e.g. neuroscience, psychology, social science, gaming, or human computer interaction)
• High motivation for research and capability of working in an autonomous way
• Excellent communication skills in English, both written and oral form

Offer:

• Begin: Immediately
• Duration: 3 years

Place of employment: Vienna, Austria; research visits at the MIT

We are pleased to invite interested persons who wish to contribute their knowledge, their network and their ideas to the field of applied research. Please attach meaningful application documents, including certificates and photos.

Mrs. Maria Leonhard-Maurer, MSc
Head of Human Resources
2444 Seibersdorf
Tel.: +43(0) 50550 – 2032
maria.leonhard-maurer@ait.ac.at

click here to apply and to learn more about AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH
Donau-City-Straße 1 | 1220 Wien, Austria | T +43 (0) 50550-0 | F +43 (0) 50550-2201, office@ait.ac.at | www.ait.ac.at, T +43 (0) 505 50, F +43 (0) 505 50-2201, www.arcs.ac.at

See on Scoop.it – Transportation Today

Magic Body Control? We prefer cat-like reflexes, don’t you? Visit http://www.jaguarusa.com to learn more.

See on www.youtube.com

See on Scoop.it – Transportation Today

I love being on a bike. It helps me feel free. I get it from my dad.

See on vimeo.com

See on Scoop.it – Transportation Today

Google Ventures vient d’investir 257,79 millions de dollars soit environ 194 millions d’euros dans Uber, un service de réservation de chauffeurs privés via des smartphones et des tablettes et qui concurrence les taxis.

See on www.zone-numerique.com

That’s a bit of surprise.. One would expect a city like Portland to top this list..Nonetheless, it is good to see the number of cities expanding their biking infrastructure.

San Francisco is the most bike-friendly city in the United States. With 5.6 miles of dedicated bike lanes, multiuse bike paths and signed bike routes per square mile (263 miles in total), the Californian metropolis offers the best biking infrastructure in the country.

You will find more statistics at Statista

Happy to be invited as a speaker for this event.  Hope you, my readers and followers, can tune in and learn from some of the best folks in the business about the impact of social media on ITS.

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The 10th Positive Thinking webinar takes place on Wednesday 20 November at 9am Pacific, noon EST, 5pm UK, 6pm Central Europe and focuses on Social Media and ITS.

How has social media affected the way the transportation industry does business? Are we using it properly? Do we fully understand the benefits? The latest in our series of POSITIVE THINKING webinars will attempt to answer these questions (and many more) and provide some fascinating insights into this new facet of the ITS sector.

Expert panellists Andy Palanisamy (TransportGooru), Lloyd Brown (AASHTO), Larry Ehl (Transportation Issues Daily), Ayelet Gal Tzur (Technion University, Israel) and Susan Grant-Muller (University of Leeds, UK) join regular presenters Kevin Borras and Bob McQueen to consider the likely undesirable side effects, how to best harness the value of a social media network and explain how the likes of Twitter and Facebook fit within a more integrated approach to outreach and marketing for transportation agency.

Join us on Wednesday 20 November and participate in this fascinating event. If you can’t listen live then register anyway as we will send you a link to the recording and slides a couple of days after the event. We look forward to you hearing us…

Click HERE to register.

Please note that in order to join the webinar, ‘Go To Webinar’ requires users to download some software. If your firewall may prevent this, please check with your IT department.

Image: Command Center of the RMT (via technositaf.it)

Although the utopians have talked about intelligent transportation since the 1950s, in the real-world terms it’s still a very new concept. The EU began work on the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) framework in the early part of last decade, the U.S. Department of Transport hosted its first Connected Vehicle workshop earlier this year; and truly coordinated and integrated transportation systems exist only as computer simulations or localized pilot schemes. But the potential for the ITS is tremendous and it was fully recognized at this year’s Smart Mobility World exhibition held from 25th – 27th September in Turin, Italy.

The highlight of the exhibition was the Road Management Tool Project (RMT) – a collaboration between the Turin city council and Tecnositaf S.p.A. It’s a 16,000-mile long network of integrated road communications featuring an independent uniform data network. The network is able to capture and transmit precise geo-referenced data (video surveillance, audio and real-time measurements) across a single network and store it all in a single database.The data will be accessible to both the authorities and drivers enabling them to make better decisions and avoid congestion.

There have been attempts to build similar systems in Europe but they have always failed because they involved several departments arguing with each other and trying to make various alien data formats compatible with each other. The RMT boasts a modular design. New functionality can be added-on, and the network can be expanded as far as necessary.

Connected Vehicles joining the Network

Once the RMT system has been tested locally, it’s expected the same concept would spread around the whole country. It is likely that other countries will look to implement a similar system.

The beauty of RMT is that its basis is so simple – the architecture is built around the IP protocol – standard that is used on a wide variety of connected devices. It’s much cheaper to use because you’ll be able to log on using your existing PC or mobile device. Since the RMT is compatible with other technologies, it will make sense for the car manufacturers to comply with the network and build cars that can communicate with the RMT directly.

The organizers of Smart Mobility World have estimated that the global market value for the Connected Vehicle is currently around $17.5 billion but is expected to explode to $52.5 billion by 2018.

It may be a conservative estimate because currently the concept of Connected Vehicle is rather vague. It includes stuff that is not really connected – night vision system, lane departure warning and automatic parking system. Once you equip a car with WiFi or mobile broadband and plug these safety systems into the city’s “cloud,” you get something that is truly connected. Something that can communicate with other members of traffic and make clever decisions to cut emissions and improve safety!

Note: The overview of this year’s Smart Mobility World exhibition was prepared by Arvid Linde from Creditplus.co.uk car blog. Arvid is a transport engineer and author of several motoring books. Photo via tecnositaf.it.

(via YPT)

The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) invites applications for positions in the Transit Mobility Program. The two open positions are “Associate Transportation Researcher” and “Assistant Transportation Researcher”.

Location: Successful applicant may negotiate to work in any of TTI’s existing offices where space is available. The Transit Mobility Program has staff in several TTI offices throughout Texas: Galveston, Houston, Austin, Arlington, and College Station.

Deadline: Job Postings Expire January 11, 2013. Positions may be filled as soon as qualified candidates are identified.

Salary: Starting salaries for the positions are negotiable based on qualifications and experience. The minimum salary for the Associate Transportation Researcher position is $52,000 and the minimum for the Assistant Research Scientist is $65,000.

Application Procedure: Interested individuals should complete an application online at https://cw.halogensoftware.com/texas_transport/index.do. The direct links to each position are: Associate Transportation Researcher and Assistant Research Scientist. Applicants will be required to submit a cover letter, resume/curriculum vitae, and a list of three references as attachments via the online application process.