We have a 200 character limit on our posts vs. Twitter’s 140, and from that 140 we would have to direct the message to @thisisourstop (or a new account with a shorter name), identify the stop number (likely plus a space) and one or more categories. Assuming no categories we would be cutting down to 120 characters. The two models might be too different to integrate smoothly. But we have started posting links to the stops with the most interesting comments or conversations that we see happening, and will keep experimenting like that.

For SMS, the issues is not about character length as much as it is about communicating the feature to users. We can’t really print instructions on the stickers, and putting it on the homepage would be odd as reaching the homepage on a phone browser means you can use the app as it is now. While technically possible, it falls apart because we don’t have a huge communication pipe to get the word out to, and would have to think about how to differentiate getting a list of comments from posting one of your own. It’s tricky stuff, but these ideas are good to explore just the same.

This was never a project with ubiquity in mind, and we don’t root our choice of technology in class divisions. We rooted that decision in the phones we see people using the most (we live right in Vancouver and what we see might be different from what others see in the burbs or elsewhere), in what we like working on, and in what we thought would produce the best overall experience. When we look at $99 iPhones at the lowest level, we see which way the future is going for phones and that’s what we built for.

We don’t take Robert’s criticism as negative, but rather as a validation of the core concept, that conversation among riders about their infrastructure is important. What’s been so heartening about the project is that the vast majority of people posting are indeed talking about transit and the areas and people around their stops. They are, in other words, buying into the idea, and we think that’s great. If Robert feels this kind of service should be ubiquitous, Translink is the one to talk to, and we really appreciate this token of support.

While I agree with much of the content of your comment, I really have to take exception with the tone.

No one denies that most bus riders are not smartphone users. If it’s not clear from my tweet, I don’t own a smartphone myself, and my use of TIOS is limited as a result. That said, I’ve also had the chance to interact with people who have developed tools involving SMS gateways (not Denim and Steel), so I’m privy to the fact that the reality of building TIOS so that it would be usable for non-smartphone users is a considerably expensive undertaking. Unfortunately, that’s just the way the chips fall when it comes to the way these telecommunication decisions have been made (though I don’t know if that’s Canada-specific or international).

And I would take considerable exception to levelling any blame for this towards Denim and Steel, because they and their collaborators built TIOS in their spare time. That’s time away from their community commitments, their friends and family, and they did it because they wanted to build something other people would enjoy. And they are also contributing the perhaps minor but definitely non-zero amount of money for the resources to run the service at all. Most of all, as I say in my post, it’s just a start.

So as an alternative to your approach, I would rather ask the constructive questions for actually making this happen, like: who benefits from the existence of TIOS that would be willing to put money towards making the service more broadly accessible to those without smartphones? In Portland, for example, local business sponsor specific bus stops. Or maybe piggy-back off Twitter, a service that already is accessible by SMS.

Is answering that question something you’d be interested in contributing to, Robert?

Karen

Thanks for the comment! You are far from the only person thinking about using iPads for planning in this way — in fact, while I was at the American Planning Association conference, I bumped into Darin Dinsmore of Crowdbrite who said his company’s iPad app was close to or already in the App Store. Now that I look it up, I see that the Crowdbrite app is indeed in there, although having just downloaded it myself and not being able to see any of their projects underway, I don’t know if the augmented reality features he had mentioned when he was talking about the app last year have made it into the app as available just yet.

I don’t know enough about scenario planning just yet to know if this sort of activity falls into scenario planning (my instinct is yes, although perhaps mostly on the urban design side of it) — Frank Hebbert, during a session at the APA on Advancing Scenario Planning tools (blogging backlog ack!), said that it was very likely that by this time next year we’d start seeing scenario planning in the palm of your hand, i.e. on mobile devices. I’m fascinated and thrilled but also hesitant, mostly because I’m always wondering who these kinds of tool would help, but also who they really wouldn’t.

That said, if this is a tool that can help people looking at spaces like Lougheed Highway to begin considering what it could look like as a place and not just a giant thoroughfare for cars, all the better!

I’ve imagined a “simple” app for a while, that lets you mark out perspective lines (& horizon: the app could help snap to its own guesses of building lines etc.) on a street-scene (from gmaps, or one you’ve taken yourself) and then drop in street features. Bike lane, trees, bench, 3-story with groundfloor retail. The results would clearly be uglier than a real artist, but a twitter/blogosphere of amateur quickly-hacked-together street visions would really help discussions, I reckon.

What would this street look like if narrowed? What if it had a streetcar down the middle? What if there were a row of townhouses instead of single family homes.

There are complicated apps that let you drop sketchup objects into a live virtual reality, but I’m looking for something more like cut&paste collage with perspective-smart scaling.

Once you’ve drawn on the perspective grid, I’d imagine you could also cut out elements from your original to add to the cloud or your own other scenes. e.g. what would this mount pleasant street look like with a row of kitsilano apartments?