A new study by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has concluded that motor vehicles are the greatest net contributor to global warming.

Car emissions are driving climate change

Rather than analyzing impacts by chemical species, the study based its findings on a climate model, which was used to estimate the impact of 13 sectors of the economy. The unique portfolio of pollutants, greenhouse gases and aerosols released by cars, buses and trucks was found to contribute the most to climate change.

This new analysis provides urban planners with a greater understanding of how to more effectively target emissions reductions. While emissions from the power, biomass burning and industrial sectors of the economy promote aerosol-cloud interactions that exert a powerful cooling effect, on-road transportation and household biofuels exacerbate cloud-related warming.

“Targeting on-road transportation is a win-win-win,” said Nadine Unger, who led the study. “It’s good for the climate in the short term and long term, and it’s good for our health.”

With so few commuters (less than 5% in the US, less than 20% in Europe) using public transit and the vast majority of all transport journeys occurring in cars (82.1% in the EU, 85% in the US), there is a clear need to improve the efficiency of passenger transportation by making it easier to fill up the vast amounts of empty seats that travel our roads every day.

• Download Avego’s iPhone application here to experience the future of sharing transportation.
• Learn how Avego^TM makes it easier to fill up empty seats in cars, buses and vanpools.

Robyn Sheehan joined Avego last summer, having graduated with an Honors Degree in Business Information Systems from UCC. Now based at Avego’s global Network Operations Center in Kinsale, Ireland, Robyn has previously worked with a major retail outlet in Cork and Barclays Bank in London.

Robyn Sheehan

Since joining Avego, Robyn has been busy implementing a new internal knowledge sharing tool for Avego’s staff, providing support to transport operators and individual consumers worldwide, and ensuring that operators automatically receive detailed nightly reports indicating the thousands of tickets they’ve sold each day using Futurefleet’s in-vehicle and online ticket sales capabilities. Robyn explains what she likes most about her role:

“I really enjoy improving the way that information is shared, whether that’s internally amongst staff or providing new reports to customers. I think that’s an important way of strengthening relationships – but it’s also important to keep a smile on your face, even when you’re on the phone!”

Not only does she excel at work, but Robyn is also a champion Irish dancer, achieving 9th in the world championships and 2nd in Ireland.

“I started dancing when I was four and it’s allowed me to travel the world, including Seattle where I performed as part of the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations six years running. When I stopped competing, I began to teach children, which I really enjoy.” Robyn also loves to read and is currently obsessed with the Twilight series!

Avego is recruiting. If you are interested in joining Avego, check our our careers page.

This post is extracted from the Avego monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

As a leading developer of location-based transportation applications, Avego is very involved in the development of several cutting-edge GNSS (global navigation satellite systems) technology applications for the European Union. Some of these projects will be showcased at the Galileo Application Days event in Brussels next week.

The Galileo Speed Warning Project

For example, attendees can view a demo of the Galileo Speed Warning (GSW) CARAT Counter system, which uses location-based technology to incentivize safer driving behaviour. The end-product is an in-vehicle device that displays a counter of CARAT points which increments as long as a driver drives within the speed limit, and can later be traded for rewards, such as lower car insurance.

Attendees can also visit the OPTI-TRANS stand to learn more about an innovative location-based mobile traveler information and guiding system that Avego is helping to develop for the city of Madrid. The system will serve as a personal transportation navigation tool, presenting optimal routing to Madrid’s commuters, based on their current location and the real-time availability of empty seats on public transportation and in private cars (“shared transport”).

Hosted by the European Commission, Galileo Application Days will be held at the Charlemagne Conference Centre in Brussels from March 3rd to March 5th. In addition to Avego taking part in the “Applications Village”, Avego’s Eurasian Sales Director, Jonathan Guard, will also be giving a presentation on the GSW project at 11:40 on March 5th.

This post is extracted from the Avego monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

Avego’s China office, which was officially opened last October, has just launched 2 new projects that are designed to improve transportation efficiency at the Ascendas IT park in Dalian, where Avego China is based.

Employees at Ascendas IT Park in Dalian

A new Shared Taxi system will save costs for local employers and employees who pay to take a taxi home in the evenings when the public transportation services have ended. The system matches together people traveling to the same areas. Users interact with the system via a touchscreen interface in the lobby of the office building.

On average, 300 of the 3500 people working in the office building take a taxi home in the evening, which amounts to taxi charges of millions of Chinese RMB per year. Avego’s new system will reduce these costs by 40%.

An LED sign displaying real-time passenger information

Avego has also setup its Futurefleet system, with LED signs displaying real-time passenger information for a shuttle bus service between Avego’s office building and the entrance of Ascendas park. Employees can now make better decisions about whether or not to make the long walk to the entrance of the park, or wait for the next shuttle bus.

Anyone interested in learning more about Futurefleet or Avego’s Shared Taxi system should contact the Avego sales team today.

This post is extracted from the Avego monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

However, Orange County in Los Angeles already has a wildly successful BRT system that was launched in 2004. In conjunction with the local rail system and the addition of more bike racks on buses, the BRT is a unique multi-modal transportation system that is available to commuters in L.A. 24 hours a day and cuts commute times by half. The system is now being modeled by other cities around the world.

Check out this great film by streetfilms.org to learn more and to see BRT in action:

Learn more about Futurefleet, Avego’s end-to-end real-time management system for passenger transport operators here.

Follow Avego on Twitter.

This perfect storm created an America of single occupancy vehicles, urban sprawl and commute times expanding from a few minutes to hours a day. The days of hitch-hiking were gone and carpooling became the ugly step sister for many years, considered dangerous and inconvenient by many.

However, in the last five years, as the US becomes more environmentally responsible and resistant to foreign oil dependency, we’ve come to realize a long-term solution needs to be found. Beyond hybrid vehicles, electric cars and public transit, we have to get more people to change their narrow view of owning a vehicle for themselves and instead think in terms of maximizing seat capacity for a better way of life.

The Avego solution is simple. Reduce the number of single occupant vehicles on our roads by creating a network of Shared Transport vehicles, in which people are matched together in real time to occupy a single vehicle, thereby saving gas, money and harmful C02 emissions.

Now, you can become part of the solution by sharing your car in a safe and economically positive environment by broadcasting empty seat availability and choosing to take on riders (for compensation). Conversely, as a rider, you can broadcast your destination and be matched in real time with drivers going where you need to go, when you need to go.

Safe, efficient and environmentally friendly… that’s the Avego Shared Transport solution.

Avego Shared Transport is available as a free iPhone app.

Riders do NOT need an iPhone to request rides – they can sign up for a free account to book rides online. Create your free Avego account here.

Learn more about Avego Shared Transport here.

Follow Avego on Twitter.

In the last year, Twitter has grown in popularity amongst transit agencies in the US as a tool for communicating with their customers about service changes and general news. While the number of agencies using Twitter is still small, agencies are increasingly trying to figure out how it can be of real strategic value.

Some great articles have been written about the business benefits of “tweeting” (such as here, here and here), but the specific role that Twitter can play in your transit agency requires some internal analysis. A general rule of thumb is to start by considering Twitter in terms of “how we communicate with our customers”, including potential customers.

Twitter provides some specific benefits to transit agencies, such as the ability to provide real-time service updates to customers, but it also offers more traditional marketing benefits, such as generating leads and web traffic. Once a decision has been made about how Twitter will be used to communicate to the world, then it can be assigned to a particular group with specific objectives.

When deciding how to use Twitter in your agency, look towards other related organizations that are already using Twitter, by searching for “#transit” on Twitter.

Avego uses Twitter to communicate the latest in transit related news and technology. You can find us at www.twitter.com/AvegoUSA

US Department of Transportation

The money represents the first batch of funding by the Obama Administration for its Livability Initiative, a joint venture of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“This represents a significant effort to promote livable communities, improve the quality of life for more Americans and create more transportation choices that serve the needs of individual communities,” Secretary LaHood said. “Fostering the concept of livability in transportation projects will stimulate America’s neighborhoods to become safer, healthier and more vibrant.”

A maximum amount of $25 million per project will be made available from approximately $130 million in unallocated discretionary New Starts/Small Starts Program funds. Eligible projects include streetcars and other urban circulator systems. Priority will be given to projects that connect destinations and foster the redevelopment of communities into walkable, mixed-use, high-density environments.

Transit operators interested in acquiring Futurefleet^TM to enable reliable real-time passenger information (RTPI) for their fleets can now apply for this funding.

Avego has compiled two documents with more information on funding opportunities for transit agencies in .pdf format, which are now available here and here.  Contact information is provided on each document if you have more questions or would like assistance in applying for these grants.

“We really appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm for the pilot, and the feedback we receive every week has driven the improvements and new capabilities in Version 2.0,” said Avego’s Pilot Programs Manager, Audrey Linnane. “Everyone is looking forward to trying it out for themselves, and to the upcoming expansion of the pilot to more staff and students.”

Focus Group at UCC

Avego’s UCC pilot aims to expand affordable commuting options for staff and students by providing a marketplace for drivers to offer their unused seats to other people in real time. 20 staff and students regularly use Avego’s iPhone app, while many hundreds more have registered their interest in participating in the next stage of the pilot, as both drivers and riders.

As well as being featured in the New York Times, and other local, national and international press, the pilot was also recently the focus of this evening news story on Irish national TV station TG4 (note: this video is in the Irish language, with English subtitles).

Avego’s Futurefleet, which is built on top of the same transport management infrastructure that Avego’s Shared Transport consumer application runs on, is seeing an explosion of growth and acceptance in North America.

Avego’s original, and still unique, strength of allowing consumers to advertise and / or book seats in passing vehicles provides cities and transit agencies with something they have longed for in their bus and public transit networks: an inexpensive, responsive and rapidly deployable solution for real-time passenger information.

In the last month, 3 more North American cities, which will be announced soon, have signed on to roll out Futurefleet-equipped buses. The attraction of the Futurefleet system is not only the cost, which can be up to 10 times less expensive than legacy technologies, but also the increased speed, capabilities and convenience of the Avego web-hosted solution.

Avego has just opened its San Diego office

Avego has just opened a new office in San Diego, which will provide post-sales support to our growing list of customers in North America. The new office is headed up by Leon Wong, who joins Avego from OneTouch – a leading provider of interactive distance learning applications, where he filled the roles of Senior Content Developer, Sales Engineer and Project Manager.