Recently I’ve had several friends get parking tickets for parking at a meter space and using the “Pay by Phone” feature offered by Verrus (ironically enough, a local Vancouver firm.)

The service works great, most of the time, you park at a meter, you call a phone, punch in the meter space and how long you want to park for and you’re done. It even sends you a reminder when your parking is set to expire so you can add more time remotely without going back to the meter.

One major problem, if you drive multiple cars and have them associated with your cell phone number, the system will default to your last chosen car – so if you’re driving your other car and in a rush and hit pay and go the system will indicate to the parking enforcement officer that you have not paid.

For a service that advertises itself as being about speed (dial one number and go) this doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Nor does it make sense from a logic point of view. All they need to know is that parking space X has been paid for. You can only get 1 car in a parking spot, so it will be one of the license plates associated with the account. Get rid of the “specific license plate” selection when paying for parking and by default accept any license plate on the account in the spot and all is good.

It saves a tonne of angry customers who knew they paid for parking but got a ticket anyways and makes people want to use, not hate the service.

Just a bright idea…

Recently I traveled on BC Ferries from Vancouver to the Gulf Islands (a few kilometers from Victoria) and went via the Tsawassen Swartz Bay Ferry and then took another ferry to get to the island itself. All of this was fine, it was the only scheduling option which worked for me at the time (and direct ferries on this run are practically non existent)

I bought my ticket at the terminal received a boarding pass for the Vancouver-Victoria ferry but not for the second Victoria Gulf Islands ferry. When I asked about this I was told I needed to go thru the ticket lineup at the other end and get another boarding pass there (after waiting in a line)

I understand there is a need to have accurate passenger counts on board ferries, but why not issue one boarding pass / receipt (cut down on paper use) and then use a handheld barcode scanner computer similar to those used at sporting venues to validate someone as boarding the vessel? That way one ticket could work for multiple journeys or barring that, all of the boarding passes could be issued at the point of origination saving the need for a big lineup at the other end.

No idea what the costs would be, but this would enable people to make tight connections on ferries a lot easier rather than running like crazy and hoping you’ll still make the boat.

Crosswalk Signal

Originally uploaded by j_stathakis

Usability of minor little things can make a major improvement in our lives by improving the information available to us.

The simple crosswalk signal is a great example of where you can make a minor change and improve usability considerably.

At present most signals go something like this:

Solid “WALK” then a steady flashing “DON’T WALK” with a solid “DON’T WALK” just before the traffic light is due to turn.

How can we make it better?

Take the “DON’T WALK” flashing – at present it flashes at a steady rate so one doesn’t have any idea how soon the light is going to change, people do “run it” and get caught in the middle, driver’s can’t use the information to plan if the light is going to change to take their foot off the gas and preemptively brake.

Why not make it so the “DON’T WALK” flashes slowly at first and as it gets closer to the light changing make it flash faster and faster. A slowly flashing signal people means people wouldn’t slow down but for a rapidly flashing one people would. Less gas burned by avoiding accelerating only to brake a second later.

It’d save gas and make things a little less stressful. As an added bonus, you wouldn’t have to replace the signals themselves (the other option the digital count down timer requires a replacement) but rather re-program the lights to change the flash rate.