VTA Opens Innovation Center

The VTA opened an innovation center a couple weeks ago at its River Oaks headquarters (3331 N First Street). This is a space where VTA teams, companies, and students can get together and work on new transportation technology. VTA is looking at a variety of ways to improve the customer experience and this new innovation center will help them focus on these efforts.

Below are some examples of the technology projects that VTA is currently working on:

• A zero emissions vehicle with dynamic, on-demand routing directing its driver to pick you up with a request from your smartphone—we’re requesting proposals for the software to drive this and looking closely at the operational challenges.
• Bluetooth beacons throughout the system to tell smartphone apps where you are so they can help you plan your trip, improve accessibility or offer you coupons—this will be a central focus of Hack My Ride 2015, VTA’s app challenge starting this summer.
• Expanding our popular TransLoc real-time light rail arrival app to our bus fleet, as requested by our customers.
• An open-source, multimodal  trip planner for any combination of transit, walking, biking, park and ride, bike share and driving (if you must). You can customize your biking directions based on your safety, climbing and speed preferences.
• Touch screen and LCD monitors at light rail stations and transit hubs to provide real-time information, trip planning help, and more.
• A pilot big data project with Allied Telesis to share and analyze camera feeds, sensors and social media in the cloud, enabling better collaboration with security partners for Super Bowl 50.
• Working with startup Transitmix, a Code for America spinoff backed by Y Combinator, to move from paper and spreadsheets to an immediately responsive online transit planning tool that can engage the public and improve planning.
• Working with our North San Jose neighbor Cisco on the Internet of Things for transportation—buses that talk to trains that talk to bus stops that talk to traffic signals that talk to bikes that talk to...you get the idea.

Source: VTA

Notre Dame Park Website

Last year a team of Axis and City Heights residents in Downtown San Jose did an awesome job cleaning up a disheveled dirt lot next to their building and turning it into something the community could actually use. The San Jose Downtown Association even jumped in and installed a new fence which you can see below.

The end result of this grassroots project is a park where neighbors can garden, kids can play, and pet owners can bring their dogs for a run. Now the "Notre Dame Park" even has a website, which you can visit right over here!

If you are wondering about this history of that 7up sign (which was also recently restored), check out the short video below.

Notre Dame Park Neighborhood from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.

Wednesday Wishlist: Google's New Office Concept in San Jose

Not content with just transforming advertising, mobile computing, and cars, Google has set its sights on completely changing the environment in which people work. The 10 minute video below is a bit lengthy for my attention span, but completely worth watching.

Google is proposing a massive renovation of its suburban and generic Mountain View offices that would turn them into one of the most innovative office campuses in the world. Instead of creating fixed structures, the spaces would be very easy to reconfigure (like Lincoln Logs)... making them able to accommodate future office innovations decades from now. The offices space is then draped in a transparent solar-power absorbing canopy that makes you feel like you are outside. Bike and pedestrian paths are completely inter-weaved with the buildings as you can see from the photos below, and unlike Apple will be accessible to the public.

Given the tens of millions of suburban-style office space we have in San Jose, I'm hoping that local companies will find some inspiration and really think about how to design future office buildings that are not just generic boxes. Samsung is doing a great job with their new building, but Google just took it to a whole new level.

Source: SVBJ

Sourisseau News: The City of Campbell

The latest edition of Sourisseau News educates us on the early history of one of our immediate neighbors--Campbell. Why is the Pruneyard Shopping Center called the Pruneyard? Find out in the two minute video below.


The City of Campbell from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.

1st Annual Silicon Valley Bikes Festival (May 3rd @ History Park)

A new Bike Festival and Show is coming to History Park to kick off National Bike Month in May. In addition to tons of bikes and vendors, the event will also feature Moveable Feast Food Trucks, Santa Clara Valley Brewing Craft Beers, a Kid's area, and free valet bike parking (cool).

Admission is $5 and the event runs from 11am to 6pm on Sunday, May 3rd.

Source: San Jose Bike Party

San Jose Ranks as 6th Most Racially and Linguistically Diverse City in America

WalletHub has crunched Census data and ranked the 350 most populous US cities on racial and linguistic diversity. San Jose fared extremely well and came out as the 6th most diverse city in the country. San Francisco was 13th and Oakland was 14th. Also worth noting is that San Jose came in 5th specifically for language diversity and Sunnyvale came in 3rd.

Source: KQED News

San Jose is America's #1 Most Innovative Tech Hub

This may not come as a shock to anyone in Silicon Valley, but the San Jose metro has been ranked as the most Innovate Tech Hub in the US by a mile. The key factors that led to this concusion were the number of patents per 1,000 residents, the financial support behind innovation (VC funding), and the economies of agglomeration (were companies like startups are clustering together). San Francisco came in a distant third based on the scores. Surprisingly, Boulder made it to second due to substantial startup clustering. Also worth noting is the fact that San Jose has 27 patents filed per 1,000 residents, which is dramatically higher than any other city in the US.

Source: NerdWallet

Boston Properties Planning New Tech Campus in North San Jose

Three aging buildings at Boston Properties' North First Business Park are being cleared to make way for a brand new tech campus that could have up to 1.5 million SQFT of office space across seven buildings between 5-11 stories. However, it looks like these will likely not be built speculatively. Boston Properties is waiting for an anchor tenant before beginning construction.

There would be some retail included as part of the project along North First and some of the parking will be underground. The new campus will either be built in two or three phases depending on how large that first anchor tenant is. More details in the source link below.

Source: SVBJ