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Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

mchap.io

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Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#141

Post by Johnny555 »

sirmarksalot wrote: post #67
btrettel wrote: post #13

Would be nice to use the same skills to help reduce cars illegally parked in the bike lane. Identify areas which cyclists commonly complain about that (e.g., to the city) and encourage them to put up better signs?

When people routinely park in bike lanes, the problem is usually cultural, i.e. people know they're not supposed to do it, but they decide to do it anyway. Near where I work in Bellevue WA, they recently restriped the road to have a brightly painted bike lane, with double-white lines to make it abundantly clear that you were not supposed to drive in it. Bright red "no stopping" signs were placed on the curb. People s…

I think I know where you're talking about and I bike through there and the biggest problem is that they took away the "3 minute passenger drop-off/pick-up" spot right next to the transit center without giving any other options for passenger loading/unloading.

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#142

Post by megablast »

jimmaswell wrote: post #28
btrettel wrote: post #13

Would be nice to use the same skills to help reduce cars illegally parked in the bike lane. Identify areas which cyclists commonly complain about that (e.g., to the city) and encourage them to put up better signs?

Could also signal the area is starved for parking, so the lane should be removed and bicyclists should just ride in the road for those stretches. Small inconvenience to the bicyclists who still get to use the road, big win for the drivers.

Yes, small inconvenience. Just slightly less safe, right?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-12/new-york-truck-driver-...

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#143

Post by dzdt »

fencepost wrote: post #128
amaccuish wrote: post #41

$190 million?! What does the architecture consist of? A database, some forms and some integrations/api? I'm 90% sure they could have done that with free software and a good support contract with a UNIX provider for far less :/

20+ years ago I was working for a company that provided systems for secure printing of checks (including payroll checks) and direct deposit notifications. One of the things suggested as a possible enhancement was the ability to email people's direct deposit notifications to them, and I got the assignment to research it. On a technical basis, it's trivial - you already have the data stream that's going to be sent to t…

Which is also why facebook/google/etc login for websites is attractive. Offload the worst part of the work.

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#144

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ekianjo wrote: post #133
xbryanx wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is...dear educated technologists...the last time you even slightly considered working for city government? Alas, our best and brightest aren't serving the people. They toil at advertising.

the government, serving the people? Since when? Do you think they install cash grabbing radars on the roads to better serve us?

There's one neat trick to stop 'them' getting your money. It's so easy you'll be amazed!

It's "not speeding" /savedyouaclick

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#145

Post by vectorEQ »

very interesting example of data analysis and it's practical implications. awsome blog post, and you won't hear me say that quickly.

"This'll be my first blog post on the internet, ever. Hopefully it's interesting and accurate. Please point out any mistakes if you see any!"

KEEP IT UP MATT! and data munging, not sure if it's a word, but it sounds nice :D

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#147

Post by danShumway »

onion2k wrote: post #131
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have these hobbies!

I realise you're being positive and helpful, but I don't think many people could actually have these hobbies. The technical side is within reach of most HN readers, but you also need to see the problem in the first place and understand that it's actually solvable. Most people would assume that any effort would be wasted as the authorities would prefer to keep their revenue generator, so they'd never go through with t…

You could practice and build the skills necessary to have these types of hobbies!

Nothing this person is doing is magic, and to the extent that genetics or extensive background prep play a role you could still overcome that deficit enough to at least participate in the space, even if you weren't the most amazing, talented person in the world. It's not like making the world better by addressing weird problems is a particularly competitive field.

I'll make a claim that literally every single skill being shown here is something that you personally could learn, and it probably wouldn't take you more than a couple of months to a year of regularly exercising your creative muscles to get to the point where you were doing something useful.

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#148

Post by Bobbleoxs »

I too feel I couldn't pass the $190m cost in the first place. Granted, I can see where the cost ramps up as explained by @morei. Could someone explain whether this is for the 10-year contract or a license of some sort for each year?

If it is annually, they got 17m tickets over 7 years so for 10 years, assuming they issue just over 19m tickets, that means each parking ticket needs to be at least $10 to cover the cost, even at $100 per ticket, IBM is banking on 10% share? That seems excessive to me but I never worked in government so could someone enlighten me on this?

By any chance there's a conflict of interest for government to be willing to make improvement and cut down parking tickets or any other similar source of income? Or maybe that's what public audit is for?

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#149

Post by kioleanu »

Wow, great stuff!

Did you give more thought into the address cleaning bit? Or does anyone have an idea how to go about transforming mangled addresses into coordinates?

I have a problem that's been bothering me for months, similar to what you have here: people from an emergency service call-center are inputting the addresses of the emergencies. For emergencies that happen on the public domain, there is often not a specific address, but rather names of landmarks. Something like "Street StreetName / Opposite Train Station Y", which can be written like "st stName / opp tr st y" or some other infinite variations.

I don't have any after-data to corroborate, but I do have previous instances where the operator inputted the same address better. If I can extract the correct landmarks, I think I can do a Google Places search for them, with a cleaned query, like "Store Amazon, Best Street, Ohio" to get coordinates that can fall into an acceptable area.

PS: in the example you gave with Lake Shore Drive, I think you could easily correct the names with an algorithm based on the Levenshtein distance

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#150

Post by pbhjpbhj »

bpchaps wrote: post #87
myself248 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So first you submit a FOIA request for the database schema...

Funny enough, I submitted one of those to all of the biggest cities in each state for a list of their databases and the columns/tables within each. Pretty much universal rejection. The ones that didn't send me a rejection letter all told me that the cost would be somewhere between $400 and $2,000 to complete the work. While it's nice, and I've spent similar on requests before, it's not something I'm exactly intereste…

I'm reasonably sure that in UK FOIA requests have to be handled at cost? It's that true in Chicago.

Mind you the company responsible probably said "the database schema will cost $2k to put in a PDF".

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