Search results for ""Author Don Graham""

This book addresses the use of existing and emerging electronic payment technologies within a smart city in the context of the clear and proven value these systems have demonstrated in improving transportation. It addresses such question as How does the toll gantry work? How does it read the transponder tag and deduct the correct amount? How do cities harness the transaction data from mass transit to better meet the demand during peak hours? What can city planners do to make trip scheduling and payments seamless, so commuters can go from park-and-ride to mass transit to ride-share with a single payment platform? The volume is technical in nature and describes solid technical solutions to engineers and planners associated with smart cities initiatives. It is specifically designed to support smart city designers and engineers as they develop strategies that incorporate the latest payment system technologies. It will also be of value to private sector payment systems solution providers looking to deliver their products and services to smart cities. In addition, the book supplements technical perspectives with guidance on planning and implementation. For example, it defines procurement approaches for emerging technologies such as crypto currencies and block chain. Rounding out technical detail with advice on policy and the organizational framework required to underpin the technologies, the book delivers practical support to smart city technical practitioners. It further stands as an appropriate text for university courses associated with smart city planning, operations, and urban analytics. This book explores these questions and provides answers that a typical transportation planner can follow. It covers technology topics such as RFID (Radio Frequency ID), ETC (Electronic Toll collection), and ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition). The book also delves into how contactless payment (Near-Field) technologies can be used in a smart city. Blockchain is introduced as a platform that is suitable for solving the problem of payment segregation and shows how the entities in a smart city can work together to provide a seamless payment solution for riders across different modes of transport. The book also covers some theoretical concepts of congestion pricing which students at the university level can apply to city planning projects and research into smart cities. Several examples of US-based and international smart city implementations are provided in the closing chapters which demonstrate new, innovative smart city techniques for the transportation planner.

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Don Graham brings together the history, color, and character of Texas' capital city since 1839 when it was selected, on the advice of Mirabeau B. Lamar, as the site for a new capital of the then - Republic of Texas. Essays, fiction, and poetry reveal the variety of literary responses to Austin through the decades and are organized in a roughly chronological fashion to reveal the themes, places, and personalities that have defined the life of the city. Austin was always about three things: natural beauty, government, and education; thus, many of the pieces in this volume dwell upon one and sometimes all of these themes. Besides O. Henry, the other most important literary figures in the city's history were J. Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichek, and Walter P. Webb: folklorist, naturalist, historian. During their heyday, from the 1930s through the early 1960s, they were the face of literary culture in the city. They remain a source of interest, pride, and sometimes controversy. Austin is a well-known haven of liberal political activism, represented by such well-known figures as Lyndon B. Johnson, Ralph Yarborough, Ann and David Richards, Liz Carpenter, Willie Morris, John Henry Faulk, and Molly Ivins. The city is also a haven for literary writers, many of whom appear in these pages: Carolyn Osborn, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Dagoberto Gilb, Stephen Harrigan, and Lawrence Wright, to name a few. Among the poets, Thomas Whitbread, Dave Oliphant, David Wevill, and Christopher Middleton have long been on the scene. Certain sites recur - the University Tower, Barton Springs, various watering holes of another kind - so that anybody who has ever spent time in Austin will experience twinges of nostalgia for vanished icons, closed-down venues, and long-gone sites of pleasure brought to life once again, in these pages.

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