Transportation Tech in Baltimore

Interested in open data, software, mapping, and transportation? Come join us in Charm City! The Association for Commuter Transportation (ACT) (http://actweb.org/) is providing us a meeting space in conjunction with the 2015 ACT International Conference. (https://www.actconf.org/) (You do not need to register for the conference in order to attend our meetup, but please do RSVP via this site.) We'll be in the Frederick/Columbia room of the Hyatt Regency (http://baltimore.hyatt.com/). Doors open at 6:05 with pizza and drinks courtesy of our sponsor, Arlington, VA's Mobility Lab (http://mobilitylab.org/). Presentations start at 6:30; we'll wrap up by 8:30. We invite folks to mingle afterwards until 9:00.

Here's our lineup:

• Jaime McKay from Central Maryland Regional Transit (http://www.cmrtransit.org/) will show how GTFS Builder helps Maryland expand open data.

• Michael Walk from the Maryland Transit Administration (http://mta.maryland.gov/) will update us on MTA's plans to open up its data, including real-time, ridership, routes and stops.

• Kotaro Hara (https://twitter.com/kotarohara_en) will show how he collects street-level accessibility data using crowdsourcing and Google Street View to support Baltimoreans with mobility impairments.

• Chase Gilliam (https://twitter.com/ChaseGilliam) will show us his Bike Stack (https://bikestack.herokuapp.com/) program.

• Elliott Plack (http://elliottplack.me/) made a map of historic/abandoned Baltimore transportation projects like the Red Line and the cross town expressway.

• Jason Lancaster will show how he built a quick, cheap iOS app for the Charm City Circulator.

• Kyle Fritz (http://kyle.fritz.io/) will share how OrderUp (https://orderup.com/) uses data science to navigate Baltimore's street grid.

• Chris Whong (http://chriswhong.com/) will talk about his project to reverse-engineer the MTA (http://mta.maryland.gov/)'s real-time bus-tracker app (http://mta.maryland.gov/bus-tracker).

• Justin Elszasz (http://www.thetrainingset.com/) will digs out stories derived from parking citation data from Baltimore's open data portal.

There are several good articles about Chris Whong's project: Civic hackers are already building a better MTA bus tracking system (http://technical.ly/baltimore/2015/02/16/mta-bus-tracking-chris-whong/), Bus pass: Civic hackers open transit data MTA said would cost too much to share (http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/25/bus-pass-civic-hackers-open-transit-data-mta-said-would-cost-too-much-to-share/), and Chris's own story, Anatomy of a Civic Hack: Freeing Baltimore’s Real-time Bus Data (http://chriswhong.com/open-data/anatomy-of-a-civic-hack-freeing-baltimores-real-time-bus-data/).

See also this story about Justin Elszasz's work: What parking ticket stats reveal about Baltimore’s use of open data (http://technical.ly/baltimore/2015/04/21/justin-elszasz-training-set-parking-ticket-open-data/).

Inspired to do your own project? See Reinvent Transit list from technical.ly (http://technical.ly/baltimore/2013/04/09/openbaltimore-transportation-datasets-updated-for-reinvent-transit-hackathon/), this list from Open Baltimore (https://data.baltimorecity.gov/browse?category=Transportation), and the Github (https://github.com/gomrln/merlin) site behind MRLN (http://www.mrln.org/).

For folks coming from Washington, the last Penn Line (http://mta.maryland.gov/schedules/display.php?route=penn_southbound.xls) MARC train (http://mta.maryland.gov/marc-train) for DC leaves Penn Station at 9:15pm. (The Camden Line's Camden Station is closer to our event, but its last train leaves at 6:15pm.) You can use the free Charm City Circulator (http://www.charmcitycirculator.com/)'s Purple Line (http://www.charmcitycirculator.com/sites/default/files/ONLINE_Purple_Route_Maps_052915.jpg) to ride the bus to Penn Station. The Inner Harbor stop at S Calvert St & W Pratt St is a few blocks from our location at the Hyatt Regency (http://baltimore.hyatt.com/en/hotel/home.html). The Circulator runs every 10 to 15 minutes, until 9:00pm. Amtrak (http://www.amtrak.com/) has more-expensive departures at 9:20pm, 10:10pm, 10:20pm, and 11:15pm.

Follow @techiesdc (https://twitter.com/techiesdc) for "Transportation Techies" updates.

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