Transit Oriented Book Lending

Have you ever gotten to the train station and discovered that you forgot to bring a book to read on your morning commute? Well if your commute starts at BART's Pittsburg-Bay Point station, that will soon be no problem. Simply go to the library book vending machine and check out any one of 400 titles available. The Contra Costa County library system, with grants from the California State Library and the Bay Area Library and Information System, will be installing Bokomaten book vending machines -- made by Distec AB of Sweden -- in three area BART stations. Hold your library card up to the machine to allow it to scan the barcode, browse through the inventory of titles displayed on the screen, select your book and about 20 seconds later out pops a real hard-copy volume in a plastic case which you then return to your local Contra Costa County branch library before the end of the three week loan period. See the machine in action: search for "Bokomaten" at http://www.youtube.com.

Thanks to S.D. Tannenbaum for the heads-up.

Photo courtesy San Jose Mercury News.

Transportation Seminar and Cookie Time 25 October: Smart Parking

Ohh Hello! Please join us in the ITS Library this Friday at 3:30 for our weekly 'Cookie Time.' This week our lecture, beginning at 4:00, is called "Transit-Based Smart Parking in the U.S.: An Evaluation of the San Francisco Bay Area Field Test" and is presented by Dr. Susan Shaheen of UC Berkeley as well as ITS Davis' Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC).

Rising demand for parking at suburban transit stations, such as the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District in California, necessitates strategies to manage traveler demand. To better manage parking supply, researchers implemented a smart parking field test at the Rockridge BART station from 2004 to 2006 to evaluate the effects of smart parking technologies (changeable message signs (CMSs), Internet reservations and billing, mobile phone and personal digital assistant communications, and a wireless parking lot counting system) on transit ridership and response to service pricing. Researchers employed expert interviews, Internet surveys, focus groups, and parking reservation data to conduct this analysis. This presentation provides an overview of the project, behavioral effects of the field test, and lessons learned.

The talk will be held in 240 Bechtel as usual.

BART: 35 Years of Service

This week BART celebrates the 35th anniversary of their train service. What would the San Francisco Bay Area be like without BART? Smog ridden and painfully congested? BART has previously been named one of the Top 10 public works projects of the century as well as great planning disaster. Happy birthday, BART!

I Can Has New Deck?

Photo courtesy of jeffc5000.

The Bay Bridge will be closed Labor Day weekend. After the major information campaign by Caltrans and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, everybody in Northern California and beyond shouldn't be surprised come Friday night when the bridge is closed. Over $1 million has been spent to advertise the closure. Despite this effort, some travelers won't be satisfied. Hopefully engineering firm C.C. Meyers will work as efficiently as they did on the MacArthur Maze Meltdown.

If you do need to cross the bay this holiday weekend, plan ahead. BART will be running trains around the clock to compensate.

BART appoints first woman General Manager

At a special meeting on August 23 the BART Board of Directors appointed Dorothy Dugger as the District's eighth General Manager. Ms. Dugger, who has worked for BART since 1992, previously served as Deputy General Manager and is the first woman to lead BART in the District's 50 year history.