Global Telematics: Telecommunications Transportation Travel Telecommuting Transit-Oriented Development Telework

Global Telematics is proud to be hosting the Ridesharing Institute's Pooling Imperative project
on our company web server: Pooling-Imperative.org

Global Telematics is a research and consulting firm that approaches opportunities and problems in individual, organizational, and community performance with deep technology understanding and a policy perspective.

Our viewpoint expressed in our consulting services encompasses both information and communications technology (ICT or telematics) as well as transportation (physical movement).

We do analysis, design, planning, presentations, and training for businesses large and small, think tanks, government agencies, chambers of commerce, economic development organizations, regional planning organizations, non-profit civic associations, and many others.

We have been in continuous operation under the name "Global Telematics" since 1986. Jump to what's new.

The work of San Jose State University Economics Professor Mike Pogodzinski and John Niles on incentives to reduce solo driver commuting by high tech professionals was presented in a poster at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board on January 10, 2024.
John Niles is working with the climate action organization San Diego 350 on advancing regional consideration of microtransit as a travel mode for mobility disadvantaged residents of San Diego County.
Since 2018, Global Telematics' president John Niles has been focused on writing and following up on new concepts that explain and advance vehicle automation. The textbook for this effort was co-authored with Canadian Bern Grush: The End of Driving: Transportation Systems and Public Policy Planning for Autonomous Vehicles (Elsevier, 2018). Both authors are available for educational presentations, workshops, and consulting on the concepts in the book, A second edition is being prepared for release in early 2024.
Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University in July 2021 released a study that John Niles and Mike Pogodzinski performed in 2020-21 for California Department of Transportation. Title is "Steps to Supplement Park-and-Ride Public Transit Access with Ride-and-Ride Shuttles." This research examines the circumstances where fixed route bus route service could cost-effectively be replaced by on-demand microtransit, with equivalent efficiency and a higher quality of complete trip completion. There are six recommendations for the improvement of public transit in California at the conclusion of this report. The two-page research brief is here. The abstract and full text report is here.
John Niles has been doing research with Mineta Transportation Institute for 20 years, and a second study is now released on the transit oriented development topic [earlier!], this time teamed up with an outstanding San Jose State University economics professor Mike Pogodzinski, who dug into the ridership numbers from three transit agencies to see how Park-and-Ride was influencing transit ridership before the pandemic struck. Bottom line: "Parking is surprisingly important." A webinar covered this topic in March 2021, and the video of this webinar is here. Mike and John decided to take on the topic of comparing two ways of creating transit rider-density to answer a basic question of how ridership is influenced by each. They hope to begin a critical discussion around a follow-on question for transit agencies -- does parking near transit stations bring you the ridership you seek? Click here for the project home page, "TOD and Park-and-Ride: Which is Appropriate Where?"
Over the past five years, Global Telematics has noticed a rising tide of well-funded development in battery-electric, short-range intra-city and inter-city aviation. We are taking steps to get this new mode included in alternatives analysis for the BC-Seattle-Portland-Eugene Cascadia Corridor. http://www.electricaviationplan.com/
In recent years, Global Telematics' president John Niles worked on projects that bear on the future of personal mobility. Around Seattle-Tacoma, Global Telematics spun off non-profit think tank, Center for Advanced Transportation and Energy Solutions, CATES, conducts educational programs on advanced planning that spurs the deployment of increasingly automated passenger vehicles. An overview of how these vehicles affect sustainability is provided in a chapter of the book, Road Vehicle Automation (Springer, 2014), titled "Synergies Between Vehicle Automation, Telematics Connectivity, and Electric Propulsion,." which John co-authored.
Global Telematics has worked on quantifying high performance urban bus characteristics. Our research project on park-and-ride impacts funded by Mineta Transportation Institute was presented at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, January 2017.
John Niles is co-founder and co-director of Smarter Transit in Seattle promoting cost-effective telematics-based solutions like Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) rather than multi-billion-dollar symbolism like Sound Transit's Central Link subway, the most expensive light rail per-mile in world history, with lower ridership compared to the promises that were made to voters to achieve three rounds of funding so far.
Global Telematics uses Twitter as an interactive, opinionated, knowledge-dissemination mechanism.