Play chicken in Helsinki traffic

by Tom Johansmeyer on

I was pretty impressed by Helsinki‘s public transportation, which was more than ample with trolleys, subways and buses. There were few SUVs, and the bike lane was rarely empty. While the Finns got the ingredients right, the mixing was … well … suboptimal.

The least menacing of the interesting transportation overlaps involves the bike lanes and sidewalk. Neither is clearly defined, and I almost got clipped by a cyclist my first day on the ground. And, that wasn’t the only Finn to take a shot at me. Of course, this is tame compared to the streets, in which cars, buses and trolleys jockey for position.

I actually saw a trolley, bus and car jammed in traffic, while a pedestrian walked straight into a guy wearing headphones while riding a purple woman’s bike. From my spot on the small patio in front of the Klaus K Hotel, I was able to enjoy the misfortune of others. But, I almost lost my arm at the hands of an errant cyclist while taking the few steps back to the front door.With Satan traveling the roads, what chance does any pedestrian have?

I snapped this shot with my Blackberry. This was the taxi in which I rode while in Helsinki over the summer. Needless to say, I did pause for a moment before getting in.

Road test: Google public transit maps on the iPhone

by Grant Martin on

The most recent firmware upgrade to the iPhone brought significant improvement to the mapping functionality, specifically with the addition of Street View and Public Transportation overlays. You’ve probably already seen Street View while browsing through neighborhoods on your local Google Maps computer. Basically it shows you what any (urban) storefront looks like from the street and is a good cross reference for when you’re walking around on foot.

What about the Public Transportation tool? To find out, I decided to give the service a try while visiting San Francisco last weekend. Follow along for a quick road test.

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Google maps with the 3G iPhone in and of itself is an excellent tool if you’re on foot in any urban environment. Need to find out where you are? Turn on the GPS, find out what corners you’re on and figure out what direction you’re going in. Type in your target address, place a pin and walk towards the pin.
If you wanted to take public transportation? Before, you had to navigate to the local public transportation website (ie, open up a Safari window and visit mbta.info) browse around, find a schedule and download it. It’s possible, but cumbersome, and you have to find a quiet corner to mess with your phone where nobody will disturb you.

With Google’s new functionality, however, schedules and fares are integrated into the map. So when you select the “Public Transportation” option from the top of the map menu, it uses your location, finds a bus/subway/train stop near you, gives you directions to the stop then gives you the departure time, schedule and fares.

Let this soak in for a second. It tells you exactly where you are, where you need to be, how to get there on public transportation, how much it will cost and when you’ll arrive. That is nothing short of amazing.

In San Francisco last weekend, I found myself in Alamo Square a few minutes before I needed to meet a colleague. Punching in “3292 22nd St” into Google Maps, I pressed the Public Transportation button and received the following:

“Departs a 1/18/09 10:21 AM, Arrives at 1/18/09, 10:46 AM — $1.50”
“Walk to Fillmore St & Hayes St”

And so the journey began. Seven minutes later I was on the 22 heading south on Fillmore, and before I knew it I was standing at Boogaloos, right on time.

Now, mind you that this is in the most technologically advanced city in the country on a clear, traffic free day. The Public Transportation option doesn’t work in all cities (cough, New York) and under all conditions. But if San Francisco is the marker by which the travel world will soon change, then a revolution is soon at hand.

Be on the lookout for credit card skimmers in The Netherlands

by Scott Carmichael on

Dutch public transit user Paul Wiegmans noticed something strange when he tried to purchase a tram ticket from a machine in Amsterdam; the card slot looked a little out of the ordinary.

When he took a closer look, he discovered a so called “skimmer” had been placed over the original card reader. Skimmers are devices that read your credit card information at the same time the real reader does its work.

Skimmers have been used in restaurants and other locations for years, but this is one of the first I’ve ever seen where the unit was attached to a ticketing machine.

The skimmer reads the information stored on your card, and a small camera keeps an eye on the number pad, in order to capture your pin code.
Paul wrote a nice description of how the skimmer works (Dutch, translated version here). Even if you don’t understand what any of this means, the photos will give a pretty good indication just how smart and sleazy these thieves are.

The transit agencies are aware of the problem, and have asked their staff to keep an eye on the machines while they work on a long term solution.

If you use a credit card machine, always be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary, if in doubt, don’t swipe!

The only good news is that your credit card company will usually be quite accommodating if fraud is detected, especially since many of these stolen credit card numbers will be used abroad for “out of the ordinary” transactions.

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Hack your local subway

by Grant Martin on

Frequent travelers on any metropolitan subway system know that the two major means for fare tracking and billing are via magnetic strip and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). And every nerd and his RPG character know that those systems can be both readable and exploitable.

To see how secure the Boston subway system was, several MIT students decided to run an analysis on the security of the infrastructure; what they found was a little disturbing. By simply wandering into unlocked doors, opening unlocked cabinets and peering around they were able to find keys to the system, get access to network hardware and find and copy employee identification.

On looking into the security of the magnetic and RFID systems, they were able to reverse engineer the code on the magnetic stripes and reconfigure the data to post $653 to a subway card. Similarly, the group analyzed the RFID contents and were able to disassemble the code.

The students point out that numerous transportation systems around the globe use these systems and technology.

Naturally, all of this quite illegal — the students were just illustrating a point to the MBTA that there are security vulnerabilities in the system that can fairly easily be exploited. Hopefully, they and the company that makes subway infrastructures perks up and makes some serious security changes as a result of this reserach.

Check out the full 87 page presentation on the execution hosted at MIT.



Europe on a budget: Take public transportation

by Anna Brones on

It really shouldn’t come as a surprise, but when you are trying to save those euros this summer, you are going to want to spend your time discovering cities by way of public transportation. Buses, street cars and metros are what the European continent is known for, and this article in the New York Times highlights how many good deals you can find aboard different forms of transportation.

The article lays out how much you’ll have to pay and where public transportation can take you in five European cities: London, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin and Rome. Any budget conscious traveler will most likely already be well versed in the variety of modes of public transportation and how to pay for them — the constant “single tickets vs. multi-day pass” question — but what I do like about the article are the recommendations for day trips, all accessible by main Metro, Tube or U-Bahn lines, and that take you to some off the beaten path destinations.

The budget basics:

London: The Tube. Invest in a pay-as-you-go Oyster Card to save some money, you have to pay a 3.50£ deposit to get the card, so make sure not to lose it so you can get your money back.
Paris: Le Metro. One trip passes are 1.50€, but the Times recommends that it’s probably cheaper to buy a pack of ten than invest in a multi-day pass.
Barcelona: Metro. Single tickets cost 1.30€, but it makes more sense to buy a ten trip pass which starts at 7.20€.
Berlin: U-Bahn. Single ticket fares start at 2.10€ and a one day pass starts at 6.10€.
Rome: Metropolitana. It’s super cheap: single-ride tickets start at 1€ and one-day passes at 4€!

Read the whole article here.