Post date: Sep 29, 2015 2:35:8 PM
The project the team is working on regards street mobility. Our project title is actually called Street Mobility. However one of the biggest problems our group is seemingly having is distinguishing street mobility from tourism. While tourism is one of the major factors that impedes the mobility there are also a lot of other factors as well. Venetians are going to work, shops and restaurants branch into the streets, tides are rising and streets are disappearing and most importantly the bottlenecks at bridges. Yet, if we were just able to get rid of all the tourists our job would be so much easier but that would collapse the venice economic structure. So we have to keep in mind that the tourists are a big part of Venice, but also the major factor contributing to its demise.
This week my research focused around other factors that contribute to poor mobility. Specifically the bottlenecks around the bridges. There are over 115 islands that make up Venice and around 400 bridges connecting those islands. There are also tragetti that are like mini boat/buses that bring people from one side of the grand canal to the other. While there is no way of expanding the amount of bridges or the actual size of the bridges there are a lot of main arteries in the city that get used more often than others. If our group can produce a mobile application that suggests other routes for pedestrians rather than the main arteries than hopefully we can improve the street mobility.
-tf