LA Grub Grabber(LAGG)

Advanced GISUrban Planning

UCLA June 6 2011

David BenoffDavid Peterson

Contents

• Quick review of the “state of the art” • Website functionality: what it does • Live example • Behind the scenes: how we did it • Contribution to Transportation Planning • Questions

Go Metro

Go Metro

• Good:– Restaurants along bus and rail lines

• Not so Good:– Sparse– No real crowd sourcing – Static – updates made (if at all) by Metro staff– Limited dining selection

Google Search: Restaurant

Google Search: Restaurant

• Good:– For almost everything…

• Not so Good:– Finding restaurants within a radius– Can’t define walking radius– Transit options are decent, but what if I want to

know how the restaurants around each stop on my route? (can do it, but really clunky)

– No Parking information

Yelp

Yelp

• Good:– Walking distance, driving distance function– Integration with Google Maps– “select area” function with map is good

• Not so Good:– For “how to get there” (no transit options listsed

or driving directions , but this exists for the mobile app)

What’s different about LAGG?

LAGG

LAGG: Find Yourself

Enter your location or Click on the Map to find restaurants within a ¼ - Mile radius

LAGG: Go there - BUS

Find all bus routes within a ¼ - mile radius of your location

LAGG: Go there - BUS

Find other relevant restaurants on other bus route within a ¼ mile walking distance and 30 minute distance

LAGG: Go there - DRIVE

View all LA City – owned parking lots• Friends driving to meet you• You need to drive to get to a transit stop

LAGG: Be Choosy

Choose zip codes with high/low restaurant density

LAGG: Share

Share a restaurant you like via Google Forms

LAGG – Live!

Behind the Scenes – Metro Bus Network Algorithm (custom function)

• Transformed Metro GTFS data into the table structures we needed andcreated Fusion Tables services to provide trip planning functionality.

• We use lat/lon to look up stops within max walk distance

• Get departure times and trip IDs for nearby stops within time threshold

• Find arrival times and stop IDs within the time threshold for theassociated trip IDs

• This gives us a set of stops that are reachable within the max timethreshold, with a variable walk distance around each up to the maxtime, or max walk distance (whichever is lower). We add a marker foreach stop.

Behind the Scenes – Restaurant Finding Algorithm (custom function)

• Easy way: Do a radius search for each stop. But this is very slow.

• So we compute a bounding box for the stops and do a singlecategory/box search on CityGrid, giving us a large result set.

• We then iterate through each CityGrid result and see whether it iswithin the max walk radius of any of the stops. If so we find theshortest path (walk + bus) to the location and then check whether the total trip time is within the threshold.

• If the location is within the max trip time threshold and max walkdistance, we add it to the map.

Behind the Scenes – Google Fusion Tables (custom function)

• Restaurant density by zip code, number of restaurants by zip code, and LA City Parking Lots all hosted on Fusion Tables

• We query fusion tables and bring the various layers onto the map

Behind the Scenes – Google Forms

• We create a Google Form and embed it on the site.

• Once entered the form places a marker on the map

Contribution to Transportation Planning

More efficient trip-making– Destination Constraint:• Choosing the right mode for the destination• Example: Should I walk, drive, or take a bus?

– Modal Constraint:• Choosing the destination based on the mode available• Example: I don’t have a car, but is there a bus?

Contribution to Transportation Planning

More efficient trip-making– Choosing high/low density restaurant “zones”

(1/4-mile, or zip code)• Understanding the possibilities of the trip• Example: If I don’t like the restaurant I picked, do I have

to travel far to find another one, or are there many in the “zone”?

Happy Eating! Questions?

Appendix

Project: topic, description, and functionalities Who is it for, why is it useful, how are you implementing itRelevancy to planning or related field

Diagrams: flowcharts, sketches and/or wireframes that describe the site’s planning process and functional flowTeam: Description of roles and what each team member didEvaluation: what worked, what did not, what would you do if you had more time, what is the future of the project (if any)Documentation: define the technical requirements:

User interactionCustom functionsCustom layers