PacTrans News
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September 19, 2013
PacTrans Summer Interns Produce New Seattle Bus Buddy Android Phone App
Summer interns Jinglan Wang and Kevin Yang on the UW campus in Seattle
As part of PacTrans’ outreach activities, PacTrans started a summer intern program in 2013 to attract talented high school and college students to work and study on transportation related issues. The first two students recruited to this program were Kevin Yang, an incoming high school junior at the Lakeside School in Seattle, and Jinglan Wang, an incoming sophmore at Wellesley College. Both students had demonstrated their talents by winning numerous awards in mathematics competitions. Particularly, Kevin won the 3rd place in Mathcounts National Competition in 2011 and received honorable mentions in both the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) 2013 and the United States of America Physics Olympiad (USAPO) 2013. Additionally, Jinglan is a talented athlete who won 4th place in the U.S. Rowing Youth National Championships in 2012 when she was captain of the Lakeside School’s crew team. The two interns worked closely together at the Smart Transportation Applications and Research Laboratory (STAR Lab) of the University of Washington over the summer and produced an Android phone app called Seattle Bus Buddy (available for download at the Google Play Store at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.starlab.busbuddy).
The idea for Bus Buddy was born when Jinglan continuously napped through her bus stop, much to Kevin’s amusement. They decided that many Seattleites likely faced a similar issue and set to work. The application they created allows users to set a GPS enabled alarm for their respective bus stops so that those who tend to miss their stop for various reasons will no longer worry about it. This application is meant to benefit all public transit users, especially those who are visually impaired. With data support from Sound Transit, the pre-installed accessibility options on the Android phone allow the user to navigate and utilize the application conveniently. They hope that hey can someday develop an iPhone version of the application, or that the open source app will capture the interest of other developers who are willing to optimize it for various cities and languages.
For more information about Seattle Bus Buddy or about interning at PacTrans, please contact pactrans@uw.edu.
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August 24, 2013
PacTrans External Advisory Board Meeting on Oct. 17th
The PacTrans External Advisory Board (EAB) Meeting has been scheduled to take place on the UW campus on Thursday, Oct. 17th. More details to follow.
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August 23, 2013
Region 10 Student Transportation Conference on Oct. 19th
Save the Date: PacTrans is organizing a Region 10 Student Transportation Conference on Saturday, October 19th on the UW campus in Seattle, Washington.
More information: PacTrans-ITE Region 10 2013 Student Conference Flier
Please register online (and choose the student conference) as an option.
*Please note that students attending the Region 10 Student Transportation Conference on Saturday, Oct. 19th at the UW are also welcome to attend the Region 10 Transportation Conference on Friday, Oct. 18th.
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August 23, 2013
Region 10 Transportation Conference on Oct. 18th at the UW: “Transportation Decision Making in the Big Data World”
The PacTrans Region 10 Transportation Conference brings together the Pacific Northwest’s transportation community to network and to share current research results and ideas for future collaboration. This year’s conference focuses on how transportation agencies and companies can improve transportation decision making by using modern technology for less costly data collection, improved methods for data sharing, and better decision support tools.
The conference will start with a dynamic plenary session featuring public and private sector views of the benefits offered by open public databases, along with the lessons learned from agencies’ experiences with open data efforts. A lunchtime poster session will include a presentation of current PacTrans research. Afternoon sessions will focus on the changing educational needs of the transportation workforce and the secrets for moving research into practice, whether starting a company, successfully applying for a patent, or simply incorporating research findings into standard agency practice. For more information, download the flier here.
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July 18, 2013
PacTrans Newsletter – Issue #3, 2013 now available
