PittSmartLiving project gets $1.44 million from the National Science Foundation

We are excited to announce that our team has received a three-year, $1.44 million NSF grant to design, develop, deploy, and evaluate a marketplace and a mobile app for multimodal mobility, as part of our PittSmartLiving project. The marketplace will, for example, provide personalized incentives for people to take a later bus if the next one is full. The mobile app will enable multimodal trip planning, where for example part of the trip is done by bus and part of the trip is done by taking a HealthyRide bicycle or a Pitt Shuttle.

The funding will also allow us to place an additional 10-15 multimodal real-time transportation information screens in Pittsburgh. These will supplement the half-dozen locations in Oakland and Downtown already deployed in collaboration with TransitScreen, a DC-based company providing displays of real-time information. The pilot project was paid for through seed funding from the University of Pittsburgh.

Principal investigators are project leader Alexandros Labrinidis, project co-leader Konstantinos Pelechrinis, Adam J. Lee, and Yu-Ru Lin of the School of Computing and Information; Sera Linardi of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs; and Kent Harries and Mark Magalotti of the Swanson School of Engineering.

In addition to TransitScreen, we are excited to collaborate with the Port Authority of Allegheny County, Healthy Ride, the City of Pittsburgh, Oakland Business Improvement District, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, Envision Downtown, the Oakland Transportation Management Association, Pittsburgh 2030 District, Radius Networks, UPMC, the University of Pittsburgh Department of Parking, Transportation & Services, the University of Pittsburgh Office of Community and Governmental Relations, the University of Pittsburgh Center for Social & Urban Research, and Daniele Quercia, Head of the Social Dynamics team at Bell Labs, Cambridge UK.

More information about the project can be found at https://pittsmartliving.org. For news and updates, you can also follow us on twitter (@PittSmartLiving) and Facebook (@PittSmartLiving), or you can check out one of the project’s screens in Oakland and Downtown Pittsburgh.

Pitt Smart Living project hopes to ‘democratize,’ incentivize transportation [The Pitt News]

A Pitt research project is attempting to “democratize” and incentivize public transportation in Pittsburgh using public information screens and a mobile app.

The Pitt Smart Living project is currently in the pilot phase, according to Alexandros Labrinidis, the Pitt computer science professor leading the project. This phase involves installing screens, powered by startup company TransitScreen, displaying data from multiple feeds — including Port Authority buses, Pitt and UPMC shuttles and Healthy Ride bikes.

Read more: The Pitt News article by John Hamilton

TransitScreen provides real-time transportation information at City-County Building [Post-Gazette]

TransitScreen, the service to inform commuters about the availability of all kinds of transportation options that began in Oakland in April, is now available at the City-County Building, Downtown.

The free service is essentially a display monitor that tracks Port Authority buses, ride-share services like Lyft and Uber, car-sharing service Zipcar and Pittsburgh’s bike-sharing program. The service usually is provided by a large employer, but the local system is paid for as a demonstration project by the University of Pittsburgh as part of its Smart Living project to see if the monitors can be used to encourage commuters to spend their time waiting for transportation at shops and restaurants.

Read more: Post-Gazette article by Ed Blazina

New PittSmartLiving display in historic City-County Building

PittSmartLiving display in the historic City-County Building in downtown Pittsburgh.

We are excited to have a new PittSmartLiving display go live today, in the lobby of the historic City-County Building, which is celebrating its Centennial this year. The display provides location-specific real-time information about:

Port Authority bus arrivals
HealthyRide bicycle availability
Lyft availability
Zipcar availability
Current Weather

This makes the Pittsburgh City Hall the 10th City Hall in the USA that has a TransitScreen installation. The transportation data can be accessed at http://tsgo.io/pghcityhall (even from your mobile phone).

This is the sixth display of the PittSmartLiving pilot project which aims to evaluate the benefits of making multimodal transportation information available in real-time to city-dwellers. One big benefit of public displays is that they “democratize” information (according to Ms. Karina Ricks, Director of Mobility and Infrastructure for the City of Pittsburgh), since they make high-quality information available to everybody, regardless of whether they have a smartphone or not. Another benefit is that the displays put all information about multiple modes of transportation in one place (no need to go through
multiple apps).

In addition to transportation-related data, the display also shows live the latest tweets from the feeds of:

If you have any feedback for this or any of the other PittSmartLiving displays, please contact us.

Need A Ride? Oakland’s Real-Time Transportation Screens Will Lay Out Available Options [WESA fm]

If you find yourself in a transportation jam, screens scattered through Oakland could help you find a way out soon. The Oakland Business Improvement District is teaming up with a few other non-profits to provide large screens showing real-time transportation options.

They’ve been installed at the University of Pittsburgh’s Sennott Square, the SkyVue Apartments, UPMC’s Falk Medical Clinic and Presbyterian and Montefiore Hospitals.

Read more: WESA fm article by Mark Nootbaar

Real-time transit info available [University Times]

TransitScreens providing real-time information on multimodal public transportation to Oakland commuters have been set up in the lobbies of five area buildings. The pilot project, funded by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, was announced by Pitt and the Oakland Business Improvement District.

Pittsburgh’s first publicly accessible multimodal transit screens aim to provide the public with current transportation data while attracting people to Oakland’s food and retail establishments. The screens have been installed at SkyVue Apartments, Sennott Square, Falk Clinic, UPMC Montefiore and UPMC Presbyterian hospitals.

Real-time transit information making inroads in Oakland [Post-Gazette]

For Ryan Bourque, development manager at the SkyVue Apartments on Forbes Avenue in Oakland, this is a regular scene as he works in the lobby: Residents who have called Uber for a ride gather in the lobby, track their ride on a screen behind a welcoming desk in the lobby and head outside when their ride is nearby.

They are using TransitScreen, a service that provides real-time information on a variety of transit services in Oakland, including buses operated by the Port Authority, University of Pittsburgh and UPMC, ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft, car-sharing service Zipcar and Pittsburgh’s bike-sharing program.

Read more: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article by Ed Blazina

Real-time Transportation Displays Keep Oakland’s Business District on the Move [OBID]

PITTSBURGH – The Oakland Business Improvement District—in partnership with the University of Pittsburgh—is announcing the installation of TransitScreens in major Oakland property lobbies providing real-time information on multimodal public transportation to the thousands of daily Oakland commuters. This pilot project was funded by the University of Pittsburgh Office of the Vice-Provost for Research.

New PittSmartLiving Display at Sennott Square Building in Oakland

sensq-transitscreen — PittSmartLiving display at the lobby of the Sennott Square building

A new PittSmartLiving display went live today, at the Sennott Square Building, home of the Department of Computer Science, making it the first such display in an academic building in Pittsburgh.

The display can be accessed at http://tsgo.io/sennottsquare (even from your mobile phone) and provides location-specific real-time information about:

Port Authority bus arrivals
Pitt Shuttle arrivals
HealthyRide bicycle availability
Uber availability
Zipcar availability
Current Weather

PittSmartLiving project adds displays in three locations in Oakland

2017-09-08 13.05.12 — PittSmartLiving display at UPMC Presby

Our first PittSmartLiving displays that show location-specific real-time multimodal transportation information went live today in the lobby areas of all three hospitals in Oakland:

UPMC Montefiore Hospital (you can access the display at https://tsgo.io/montefiore)
UPMC Falk Clinic (you can access the display at https://tsgo.io/falkmedical)
UPMC Presbyterian Hospital (you can access the display at https://tsgo.io/upmcpres)

The displays show real-time information provided by our partner TransitScreen. The displayed information includes Port Authority bus arrival times, HealthyRide bike availability, UPMC Shuttle arrivals, Pitt Shuttle arrivals, and Zipcar/Uber availability.

Thank you very much to our UPMC partners for being early adopters!