Lookback: Transportation Camp DC and TRB Preview

A few Saturdays ago, I attended Transportation Camp DC for the first time. It was held at the George Mason University campus in Arlington, VA. (I have been to Transportation Camp South before.) The next day, I did a quick excursion in the nation's capital and previewed a few meetings that were in conjunction with the Transportation Research Board conference.

Travel to DC could have been an issue, with snow storms arriving in Atlanta on Friday, however, I was able to leave work early and switch to an earlier flight. I took WMATA Metrorail from the DCA airport and arrived at the Hyatt Place Arlington Courthouse. Evening was spent working on the MARTA Army presentation that was pre-selected for the first session at Transportation Camp.

Transportation Camp

MARTA Army Session

George Mason University was just a 20-minute walk in the cold from the hotel. I entered Founder's Hall where I picked up registration, got breakfast, and caught up with MARTA Army co-founders Simon and Bakari and other acquaintances.

Transportation is an un-conference, where topics are submitted by the audience during introductions, and sessions are arranged by late morning. We rehearsed for the session during the intro section.

Pic: selfie





We caught the attention of a few folks who were interested in starting their own "Transit Army." In the presentation of MARTA Army's initiatives, we emphasized the need for good relationships with the transit agencies, plus some software geeks who can put data and scripts together. At MARTA Army, we think this is an exciting time to get involved in transit advocacy.

Mobile Ticketing and Other Stuff

Other sessions I attended were around:

• Defining success metrics for transit, presented by Transit Center.
• Mobile ticketing
• Transportation "Shark Tank"

Although I missed half of the Mobile Ticketing session, discussions were quite passionate. I think most people want to see transit mobile app reach the level of experience brought by Uber or Lyft, or by airlines. Such apps are very well designed to guide the user from booking to passes to arrival. The apps also handle payments, and there is very little setup to do.

Transit, a Canada-based company, offers a regional, multi-modal payment solution for bike sharing, etc.
Cubic, one of the conference sponsors, was in attendance, and mentioned that transit cards would be phased out in favor of more universal media such as barcodes or credit cards. Simplifying fares might help the user, however in the end, fare calculation is implemented in the backend and is completely custom to each transit agency.




Transit advocacy groups exist in NYC (40 years of operation!), 



-