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ChineseClever Commute Comes to Los Angeles
Clever Commute, a peer-to-peer tool intended to help train commuters, is the creation of New Jersey based IT-guy Joshua Crandall, a man with whom I had the opportunity to chat with about his efforts to bring CC to Los Angeles over a french dip sandwich at Philippe’s a couple of weeks ago. At lunch Josh told me about how he created Clever Commute in 2006 as a way for he and his commuting buddies to inform each other of any delays down the line. He set up a simple email list, and if any one on the list experienced a delay or noticed a problem, they’d simply whip out their trusty Blackberry (a prerequisite for commuters) and send a short message to the list describing the problem. Every member of the list would then get that warning and viola, plans could be adjusted accordingly.
Clever Commute has grown like wildfire since its humble beginnings. Once word of mouth caught on in New York, everyone wanted a piece of the action. Crandall set up his official website, clevercommute.com, so people could sign up to become a member of a list for their particular line. In New York there are now over 20 commuter rail lines, 5 commuter bus lines, 4 light rail lines, and 2 ferry lines that have active lists of Clever Commuters informing each other of delays and setbacks. Thousands of New Yorkers rely on Clever Commute daily to keep them informed of the transit situation. According to Crandall, after the New York Times caught wind of the phenomenon and wrote a story about it, things really blew up. Suddenly other cities were interested in the technology. Boston was the first on board and now has 10 commuter rail lines covered. Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, and DC are all experimenting with the technology.
And now Josh is bringing it to LA.
The question is, does LA have a strong enough commuter culture to make something like Clever Commute feasible here? Every other city that has embraced Clever Commute are unquestionably “transit towns”. Los Angeles … not so much. Josh had planned to talk to commuters at Union Station, but found that our sleepy station at lunch time was no Grand Central. Obviously, for a peer-to-peer system like Clever Commute to work, there has to be many peers in the system, or else your Blackberry’s email box is going to be pretty light with transit alerts. With this in mind, Josh is bringing Clever Commute to Los Angeles on a beta test basis, with the seven Metrolink lines open for sign ups. With over 42,000 daily boardings, Metrolink should be able to sustain Clever Commute, but only if people are interested in participating.
Josh says there are also opportunities for Clever Commute to be used on our commuter bus lines and even our light rail lines. I thought about all the delays that Blue Line faces on a regular basis, but I have a hard time seeing Blue Line riders sending email alerts on their Blackberries. I could be wrong though. Clever Commute is open to ideas, and so am I: do you think the Clever Commute service is something that the LA area could use? And if so, what’s the best way to implement it?
Elsewhere:
- BlackBerry as a Weapon in the Fight to Commute (NY Times)
- ‘Clever’ train update service arrives (Boston Globe)
- Clever Commute Blog
Discussion
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Is it bilingual?
Ha, no, but isn’t everyone in Los Angeles? BTW, this site is now multilingual. Google machine translations are available by clicking “Translate” on the top menu bar.
Anyways, back on topic, you make a good point. Which is one of the reasons I don’t know if Clever Commute will work on the non-Metrolink lines here. It seems the Metrolink demographic is a bit more “consistent” than the urban lines in LA. I’m always amazed at all the different languages I hear on buses in LA. Diversity FTW.
[...] Read about it here. [...]
90 percent of the conversations i over hear are in another language. it’s great and so much easier to read cuz i don’t need to try and block out their loud conversations for i dont understand a word. if only i could forget any spanish i know!
but back on topic, this is pretty awesome and i would love to be able to participate on the light rail end if nothing else. maybe someday even the subways could get covered. though, i’ll give the red credit, boiz always on time.
imagine if it covered buses? hahahaha!
[...] Clever Commute Comes to LA (Metro Rider) [...]
Great idea and it took somebody from NYC to do it for free. How much do you think this would cost as a sponsored LAMTA program?
Well there would be the neccessary “research trips” to New York and Boston and maybe somewhere overseas just for the hell of it. And the technology is so “complex” they’d have to hire tons of programmers. Then of course the public meetings. And in 3-6 years we could have a system that would be down every few days.
Yes, I definetly think this could work with the correct promoting. Specifically, I think it would be great for the Canyon commutes to the Valley. Great idea.