After this prompt from Steve McClelland, my former manager at Twitter now teaching the innovation and entrepreneurship program at Duke University:
I love data and this question! Some of my favorite data projects are when the data isn’t yet being gathered, or is locked up in a PDF, and needs to be set free. I’ve been inspired by those who gather, store, clean, and share new sets of data in accessible formats. It is sometimes time consuming, but often really important work that can have an impact. …
tl;dr Our sidewalks are too narrow and we should create more space to safely maintain social distance by converting car lanes and streets to pedestrian and bike only streets in San Francisco during the COVID-19 “stay at home” order, as other cities are doing.
On Monday March 16th, our San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a public health order requiring residents stay at home except for essential needs to protect people in San Francisco and prevent further community spread of COVID-19. The details of what activities are allowed and not allowed are listed in the Mayor’s Office news release.
Among…
The flight route between San Francisco and Los Angeles is the second busiest flight route in the United States. And by number of flights, it’s the 9th busiest in the world.
A growing number of airlines serve the route. American, Delta, Southwest, United, US Airways, Virgin America, JetBlue, Spirit, and startups like JetSuite and Surf Air all operate flights between the cities. Assuming an average price of $150 each way, the 3.69 million flights along the route represent a $553.5 million opportunity.
Given the opportunity, why doesn’t Amtrak run an overnight train between San Francisco and Los Angeles?
I’m happy to share that I’ve joined the product team at Twitter! This is my second week.
I first signed up for Twitter in June 2008. Over time (and 13,886 Tweets later), it has become an essential part of my life. Through Twitter, I’ve made new friends (thanks @ mentions!), kept in touch with friends (thanks DMs!), and discovered and shared new hobbies, interests, and small ideas. It is my main source of news, where I learn about topics I care about, where I like to share photos and videos, and a place for bad jokes about the weather. …
Those who know me know I love many things but two in particular: Twitter, and reading about transportation. Specifically urban transportation, and what is being done to improve safety and mobility, and in turn, improving the quality of life in cities. I’ve learned a lot from tweets on the topic, so I want to share some accounts I follow that I think are great. If you have have suggestions that aren’t on this list, please @ reply them to me on Twitter @ptraughber.
Here are 10 of my favorite accounts to follow on the topic of urban transportation:
- Laura J. Nelson (laura_nelson): Laura is a writer for the LA Times and covers transportation developments in…
They’re distracting us, keeping us awake, damaging our hearing, and they don’t even work
A few days ago I was playing tennis with a buddy of mine in Oakland. Just after we started playing, someone’s car alarm began going off in a residential parking garage across the street about 150 feet away. The alarm went off 3 or 4 times, blaring for a few minutes each time. I have no idea why the alarm kept going off—we could see that no one was near the car, and it was locked inside a gated garage. It was loud and distracting, and caused me to lose my focus as we played.
Impress your family tomorrow with these bird facts
I had some time to spare this morning and wanted to look up some data, so on Twitter I asked if anyone was curious about anything in particular:
My friend Jana replied with a timely request:
So, I looked up some data on turkeys. Here’s what I found in 30 minutes.
First, I wanted to know about turkey production in the US. The top five most turkey productive states account for 58.5% of all US turkey production. I found that Minnesota raises more turkeys each year than any other state. At 44 million turkeys, that’s ~30% more than…
A timelapse from one of San Francisco’s busiest streets
The NACTO Designing Cities conference was held in San Francisco last week. The conference brings together folks from governments and cities all over the world to share notes with one another on urban transportation. It’s basically WWDC for transportation nerds. It’s great.
On Wednesday I dropped in on one of the events being held at SPUR. After Code for America’s Jennifer Pahlka gave a great keynote, there was a short round of presentations. One of the presentations was made by Eric Fisher from Mapbox. Eric does some really incredible work with maps and data (his Flickr account is a wonder)…
The Great Corporate Unbundling of 2014
A list of technology companies who have recently announced a plan to split themselves into more than one company.
Symantec | 10/9/2014 | Press release
Hewlett-Packard | 10/6/2014 | Press release
eBay | 9/30/2014 | Press release
Barnes & Noble | 6/25/2014 | Press release
The street view.
Below are examples of bicycle lanes from cities around the world. If you know of an example of a great bike lane, send me a link via email, or @ mention me on Twitter here. Thanks for contributing! And thanks to Google for Street View. You rock.
This post stems from this post about the record number of people riding bicycles who have been killed or injured in San Francisco.
New York City
Patrick Traughber
Raised in California. Berkeley grad. Product manager at Twitter.
