Month: July 2011

Categories
Bike Share

Bike in Bath

Spotted by Prof Michael Batty, our director here at CASA, while in Bath at the weekend:

There is very little information on the scheme, on the Internet. As far as I can tell, it was announced as far back as 2008, the scheme is powered by Bicincitta (“Bike in City”) who run numerous small Italian schemes, and there is another (local) operator who is also trialling an automated electric bike scheme at the same time – probably useful considering Bath’s steep hills. The scheme appears to be a prototype and is funded by an EU project called Civitas. Local politics may have got in the way of the scheme’s rollout.

I don’t know whether the scheme has been and gone, whether it’s about to launch or whether it’s in operation now – although Mike didn’t spot any Bicincitta bikes, or indeed any other docking stations, while walking around the centre of the city. This page states that the scheme will start in “Spring 2011” with four stands and 35 bikes.

As far as I can tell there is no website for the scheme, let alone an online map showing where the bikes are. Bicincitta do have a website showing online maps for all their Italian schemes.

Bath’s got some more interesting cycling developments underway – the Two Tunnels project is progressing – eventually two long ex-rail tunnels will be opened for cycling, one of them over a mile long. This latter project at least will be a reason for me to visit Bath if it does open next year – on my own bike.

Categories
Olympic Park

Olympic Non-Update

I was hoping to go for another peek around the perimeter of the Olympic Park this morning, but a key section of the perimeter – the part along the canal near Old Ford Locks – is still blocked off for reworking after a water main burst last year. The notices at the wall blocking off the section assure me that works will be finished by “20 June 2011″…

I did spot an interesting graphic (extract above, or download the full image from here on the ODA Planning Applications website though – an application for a covered bridge between the “WUT” (Warm-Up Track) and the Olympic Stadium, presumably covered to stop freeloaders on the Greenway from glimpsing the athletes, has some nice renderings of what it will look like. One also shows the stadium, covered in the vertical “pennants”, in blue and white, that look like they are the new thinking for the “wrap” around the facility. There’s been no announcement yet that the new-style wrap will be going on the stadium – an earlier design for the wrap was cancelled to save money – but with the Olympic Park currently under budget, hopefully it will happen. A small test section of white wrap remains on the north side of the stadium. That a completed wrap is appearing at least in the latest renderings is encouraging. Another virtual view, showing even more of the stadium is here.

Come September this year, Stratford City – and presumably the accompanying Stratford International DLR station – will be open, taking a huge bite out of the largely rectangular Olympic Park site. This should mean lots of closeup views of the Aquatic Centre and Olympic Village will become possible. I look forward to it!

Categories
Data Graphics London

Sense and the City

The Sense and the City exhibition at the Transport Museum in Covent Garden opens today, and runs until March next year. It includes a number of transport visualisations contributed by the team at UCL CASA, including a themed version of my own Bike Share Map, and a similar animation I’ve done for Oyster card tap ins/outs, and also Dr Martin Zaltz Austwick’s bike movement animation. I was along with Martin (pictured above and below!) and some of the others in the team, for the private view on Wednesday.

The exhibition is in three main sections – downstairs there are a number of big screens, showing the aforementioned animations. The area is quite dark, so the graphics have come out really well. The second section is up a spiral staircase (easy to miss) where a number of touch-screen computers show more visualisations from CASA and others, each selectable by the user. The system that runs this will allow us to update the animations during the course of the exhibition, so if we do some newer related work, you may well see it here! Behind this is the last section, which is more conceptual, with a number of “visions of the future from the past” magazine covers, and other bits of futuristic transport technology – a Sinclair C5 and a “Ryno” one-wheeled motorbike. Sadly a Barclays Cycle Hire bike is not there in the flesh, but you don’t have to walk far from Covent Garden to run into them in real life. Finally, just outside the exhibition area is a “smart” bus-stop. You have to look carefully to spot the video camera, which apparently detects how much interest people are taking in the advertising panel, and adjusts its advertising appropriately.

Of course, being the transport museum, all the regular tube trains and buses are still there. The “New Bus for London” mockup is there, as is a classic Routemaster, and it would have been rude not to have gone for a ride…

Below – the Oyster card animation and Steven Gray’s Tweet-o-Meters.