When: February 23-24, 2008

Where: Socialtext, 655 High Street, Palo Alto, CA (just blocks from the Palo Alto Caltrain stop)

About

Transit Camp is inspired by BarCamp. Bar Camp events are powered by participation and collaboration. This particular TransitCamp will highlight the public transit system in the Bay Area Region and will bring together transit officials and citizens to discuss stuff like: getting schedules on the go, the future of the Bay Area transit system, experiences and observations (not complaints, though), the websites, cool ideas for attracting more riders, etc.

Our focus is on encouraging more people to use public transit. Certainly that doesn't exclude infrastructure, but I don't think a bunch of web geeks should be focusing on that. We discussed the following three areas in which the '2.0' crowd can contribute to the conversation:

• technology
• culture
• education

Technology is in reference to the delivery of the basic data that people need to get to know how to get from Point A to Point B on transit. Good routes, personalized routes, fast routes, simple routes...with great interfaces. That sort of thing as an example.

Culture includes talking about the culture of community, openness and collaboration that we benefit from in the 2.0 space as well as finding ways to shift the view of transit as a 'poor people's transportation' to celebrating it as a cleaner, greener, more fun way to travel from point A to Point B. New York has an iconic system (and it was iconic even before infrastructure was added) as does Toronto, London, Paris, Berlin and many other european cities. I personally loved the project that was launched in Toronto around the buttons representing the stations. For those of you who have been to Toronto, each station represents an 'era' pretty much with golden tiling in the station built in the 60's, grey and baby blue tiling in the 80's stations, etc. The buttons are fantastic for celebrating that history.

Education was a topic that Margaret brought up as really effective in the past and there are loads of cool wiki projects as well as tools built by citizens that have gone a long way to getting people to use transit. I think we can be really creative on that front.

With these simple topics of conversation, I think we can go a long way.

The event will be well-documented in the form of blog posts, wiki content, photos, and video for everyone who is unable to attend. (Please use the tag: transitcampbayarea)

Schedule

Day 1: Pre-scheduled (nonCamp) primers (getting to know what's up). Morning: Transit and elected officials tell the story thusfar. Afternoon: Technologists and riders talk about possibilities.

Day 2: TransitCamp. Non-prescheduled. Brainstorming, demos and discussion

Schedule here

Goals

• Motivate capable people who love to not drive
• Make it easier to use alternatives (to cars)
• Help foster citizen/government/corporate partnerships in the Bay Area

Get involved

• Sign up on Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/96263928
• Help promote the event on Upcoming ( http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/297295/ ) or Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=9959469107 )
• Bring people to the wiki: http://barcamp.org/TransitCampBayArea
• Join the Google group: http://groups.google.com/group/transitcampbayarea

Organizing team

Sign up to help out on our Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/transitcampbayarea then put your name below:

• TaraHunt
• AdinaLevin
• ChrisMessina
• Heyward Robinson
• Margaret Okuzumi
• Dave Guerrieri (GaryAir Air Taxi, InformArt Corp)
• TimBonnemann

Volunteers

• Newton Chan

Attendees

1. Steve Rhodes
2. DaveChiu (depends on the final dates, but I'm interested)
3. VincentVanhoucke (GOOG-411)
4. Richard Soderberg
5. Meng Weng Wong who moved to Palo Alto and bought a Brompton in the same week
6. Brad Templeton (probably for just 1 day though, but I'll talk about how transit will be obsolete in 15 years...)
7. JoeHughes (Google Transit, Headway)
8. GabeWachob
9. Add your name and site here...

Resources

List of interesting material...

• http://transitwiki.adventuresinurbanliving.net/Main_Page
• http://www.traincheck.com/sf/
• http://caltrain.com/caltrain2025.html
• http://www.unimodal.com/
• http://vancouvertransitcamp.stikipad.com/wiki/
• http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?issueID=33&articleID=410
• http://toronto.transitcamp.org/ttc/
• List of third-party transit sites from Headway Wiki
• List of schedule data feeds being published by agencies for use by transit developers; they include stop locations, route information and scheduled arrival/departure times.

Stakeholder map

List of people and/or organization that should be part of TransitCampBayArea (may change based on desired outcomes, agenda, goals, message etc. of this event)...

• Companies
  • Google Transit
• Business and trade associations (?)
• Citizen Advisory Groups
• Transportation technology companies
  • NextBus
  • SkyTran/Unimodal Personal Rapid Transit
• SPUR
• Universities
  • UC Berkeley: (department of) city planning and transportation planning
  • San Francisco State: Urban Studies
  • San Jose State: Urban planning and transportation planning
• Bay Area bike people
  • SF Bike Coalition
• Public transit agencies
  • List specific departments here
• Traffic authorities
  • VTA
  • 511.org
  • MTC
  • BART
  • MUNI
  • CalTrain
  • AmTrak
  • SFO
  • SJC
  • OAK
• Government
  • City of San Francisco
  • City of San Jose
  • City of Oakland
  • counties
  • members California Congress
  • members US Congress
• Facebook apps
  • GoLoco
  • Carpool

Press and PR

People and organisations who might help with getting the word out...

• Rachel Gordon, SF Chronicle.
• sfcityscape.com
• Gossipy SFist

Financial support

List of potential sponsors...

• Craigslist Foundation

Who's blogging?

• 2008/01/23 -- Napsterization: TransitCamp Ideally: Promote Simplicity and Ubiquitousness
• 2008/01/22 -- HorsePigCow -- Car(e)Free Living and TransitCampBayArea