@AB2010 Organisation of the Web site: The AB2010 regional accessiblity forum was created in 1996 for the purposes of ensuring several main things about ITS developments in the greater Bilbao region: First, the various systems and deployments being made under this broad heading are developed on a coordinated basis from a broad regional perspective (rather than brought on line as independent, ad hoc, and almost assuredly sub-optimal implementations). And second, they are planned and implemented not as "interesting technologies" but as instruments that can help the Bilbao region move in steady and rapid steps toward a more sustainable transportation system and a more sustainable way of life.

Organization of Web Site & Project

This page is only a pot pourri of draft materials and notes at this point.
Important page, though, and to be carefully prepared before turnover.

Short Introduction

The specific purpose of this World Wide Web site is to serve as a convenient work and communications space which a number of cooperating agencies, groups and individuals in Bilbao will now use in order to fashion an all-purpose transportation "Web Portal" for the Bilbao region. The ultimate objectie, the specific intent of the portal, is to provide a first-rate Web site aimed at the general public and travelers in the Bilbao region who wish to be able to inform themselves as to the best way to get around the metropolitan area. It does not intend to compete with other sites, of which there are many in the region and the Basque Country in various stages of development. Rather it is seen as a useful complement, a source of creative interaction, and eventually a stimulus. It is intimately linked with the ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) deployments that are now being brought on-line in Bilbao, for which the AB2010 Foro is serving as a meeting place and instrument for cooperation, but nonetheless takes the broad area of traffic and transport as its targeted service area.

The WWW actual portal that the prsent Web site is serving, is to be defined, tested and refined in iterations by the group in the coming months, with the goal of having a carefully developped Beta version in place by September 1999. It is anticipated that a fully developed and tested operational versoin will be available by the end of the year. A longer term goal of this AB2010 cooperative project is to make sure that when experts from all over the world come to Bilbao for the planned 2001 ITS Europe Cities Congress and Exposition, the overall quality and usefulness of the area's WWW traffic sites is at a world level.

Making Use of This Site

The key to using and navigating within this Web site is the menu bar just to your left. While most of the items on it will be largely self-explantory for skilled Web users, you may nonetheless find some use in the brief words of introduction that you will be able to call up by cliking the small icon in front of each item.

You can come back to this opening page at any time by clicking the AB2010 icon at the top of the bar.

The eForo

The present site makes extensive use of an "electronic forum", the eForo, that has been set up at http://www.egroups.com/group/ab2010/info.html and whose use is generally explained on the opening page of that site. As you will see, the eForo offers a number of support functions: working as a documentation center, Discussion List, and central repository of information, leads and working materials. Full background on its use is also available in the Help and Information sections of the eForo, which are context sensitive in all cases. The eForo is organized into a dozen main sections, which are briefly introduced below.

Managing Team

For more information, the organizers can be reached c/o:

The Access Bilbao 2010 Program
Bilbao Metropoli-30
Gran Vía, 45 48011-Bilbao, Spain
Phone: +34 944 15 8685 Fax: +34 944 15 3424
e-mail: technicalsecretariat@bilbao2001.net

The section identifies the principle partners engaged in the AB2010 program. All of the sponsoring groups are asked to inform the Web team, including in the case that there are more than one Web sites for their agency or group that should be included in this section.

Since one of the 1999 goals of the AB2010 program is precisely to extend the membership of the sponsoring group so as to bring in the full range of organizations and institutions directly invovled in creating this broad based regoinal transportation and development partnership, this listing can also serve as a handy reminder, not only of who is already participating, but also of those who now need to be brought on board. The extenstion of the group is, in fact, one of the main businesses of the group.

SOCIOS (List to be Completed)

MIEMBROS

The Miembros are the active individuall participants in the Web project, including those within the sponsoring groups who wish to take advantage of the easy communications that the eForo allows in order to follow progress and developments.

We are asking each incoming participant to take a moment to identify her or himself . It will take you only a minute or two, and clear guidelines will be found in the Sign-In page.

ARCHIVO

The Archivo is the documentation center and library of the AB2010 program. It is divided into a number of sections, most of which can be directly accessed through other links on this page.

FASE II Documentation and Background

It is in the Fase II section of the site where you will find reports and working papers that are prepared in support of the Fase II work program. This included presentations from the various workshops and roundtables.

ENCUESTA

This, Encuesta, is a polling function that can be put to use by any of the participants in an attempt to gather reactions and attitudes on the part of the group as a whole. Clear instructions will be found in that section.
CALENDARIO The Calendario provides a convenient place to list activities and events of common interest. Particapnts are invited to announce their own events and dates.

DISCUSION

The DISCUSION component of the eForo serves both as a communications point (serving both individual and group email), and as an archive for all communications made within the site. Because of the power of the group mail function, we would ask everyone to be careful to distinguish between email that is best addressed to one or two people, or to the group as a whole. Since most of the participants are very busy, it is a good idea for each of us to make this distinction out of consideration to the others. Some further notes on this will be found on the opening page of the eForo.

Attention to Subject heading of group email:
The content of the Discusion section is organized by the Subject that the writer assigns it in the original email. Since all email is archived, and since the archive is intended to serve as a research and information tool, it will be useful if we take care to ensure that all discussion of a given item or point make use of the same heading. This will make it easier for the others to follow the thread of the exchanges. Thank you.

Next Steps

This checklist will be developed by the AB2010 Web Team, serving here as a handy reminder. Suggestions received via the eForo Discusion will be transferred here for the attention of the group.

14 May - 3 June: Core group works to develop and debug working site
Register www.transbilbao.com (available)
Review, complete and improve content and use instructions of eForo home page
Make sure that all pages have short how-to guide (icon)
3 - 8 June: Finalize site in Spanish version
8 June: Announce Spanish-language Alpha site to full AB2010 working group

From Objectivos:

Create and post on test site the first "dummy home page" for comment
Decide on a working name for the site
Post on test site a support page with links to pages that show best and worst of this approach that we can take as examples, counter examples)uture reference)
Put in a machine translation capability into site (so that the group can easily access and understand sites that may using, for example, German, French, English, Italian or Portuguese as working languages)
Begin to develop short lists of additional functionalities, objectives, etc.
Ensure that by the time of the July review meeting a first cut Alpha version of the site has been posted and iteratively reviewed and developed for at least several weeks

Some technical points of detail through Alpha test phase

Each page must load quickly (compact size, very compact graphics)
Must be intuitive and clear to user in a single screenful
Should make max use of icons and graphics to make best use of limited screen space and to reduce language dependence
All specific sites (modes, etc.) must be no more than one click away (at all times)
Should be laid out in a way such that the user always is able to come back to home site (one click) when they require additional information, communications help, etc.
Site should be both generally managed (overall content) and specifically (real time loops) updated so that it is worth consulting on a daily or more basis.
Conservative design philosophy
Add additional functionality and sophistication each time only against firm tested base- with possibility of drawback if monitoring suggests
Take advantage of web technologies (DHTML,XML, ....), in order to transmit that this is a leading technology page not only in its contents but in its appearance. (Perhaps work with a Basque student, user group, or independent to do this.)
Open up the site (public inputs) so that it provides both individual insights and comments, as well as those of transport user and environment groups.

Also needed fairly quickly:

Register site
Begin to move toward a longer term plan for the common Web site/portal
Begin to bring in transporters and other key actors (parking, police, media, meteo, etc.)
Longer Term Issues, to do, or to keep an eye on:
Type and degree of interactivity
Multi-media (voice, video)
Hot line services
Sponsorship and advertising
More sophisticated uses of machine translation (for tourists, visitors)
Links to hotels
Links to kiosks
Interactive links with information providers (newspapers, media, etc.)
Eventual development of a user club (to participate in testing, debugging, etc.)

Objectives & Targets

First Background Note & Draft Work Plan (10 May 1999)

[Machine Translation into Spanish available at Fase II.]

Global Objective:

A high quality cooperative site on the WWW that will be the first place that the general public will turn when they wish to know about when, where and how to travel in Bilbao.

Brief Description:

Working name (to be approved and registered) - www.TransBilbao.com
The site will serve as a "portal" to the numerous, fast-growing, more specialized and related Web sites that are in various phases of development in the Bilbao Metropolitan area.
A significant sub-goal is to use this site as a mechanism for putting the various Web pages of the members of the Forum and other concerned organizations and groups into the highest possible public relief
Intended to serve as a mechanism to help "tie together" the many and diverse activities under the regional ITS deployment effort that is presently going on, including the AB2010 program
It will eventually aspire to cover all transport modes and providers in the region (including taxis, package delivery, courier services, parking, etc.), as well as important related information (e.g., weather, special events, accidents, etc.)
By providing a cooperative linking mechanism, this project of the Forum is intended to give a hand to support "self-organizing" changes, including in areas where perhaps some degree of standardization or commonalties of formatting, etc. might be useful (as opposed to trying to enforce uniformity and standardization from the "center" - since there is never a "center" in the n-dimensional space that is the Web)
The ultimate objective of this cooperative development and testing program is, above all, to 'show the way' for what can and should be done with these fast-evolving technologies (by which we mean that the final outcome may not necessarily be the automatic adoption of the fine grained detail of the completed Beta program as the best final model for such a page/portal. But rather that such a choice can then be made against this rather developed backdrop of experience and concrete examples)

Key Preparatory Steps:

The immediate next stages of work under this Phase II project can be led by this special, informal, voluntary cooperative working group that we are now setting up under the Forum.
Members of the Forum to be contacted by email as part of the follow-up to the 6/7May AB2010 Phase II Roundtables, in order to let the Secretariat know (a) who specifically will be the main working contact for these tasks and, if possible, (b) the name of the person directly responsible for Web development within their agency
The intention is that a very small core group (2-4 persons) will emerge who will be ready to take on the actual work load of the development and testing work to the planned Beta test stage (September 1999).
This will be a period of intense development activity, which is expected to be useful as well for the Indicators and the TCC Coordination projects that are being carried out in parallel under Phase II.
The coordinator and rapporteur for this group will be Eric Britton of EcoPlan/Leber.
The rapporteur will be responsible for ensuring that all members of the working group will be kept informed in a timely way of all activities, and that their inputs will be invited and solicited.

Monthly Progress Reports:

The rapporteur will also be responsible for issuing to the members of the working group and the AB2010 Forum as a whole monthly progress reports over all of Phase II.

Schedule:

The overall development process is foreseen as occurring over three main phases with following as main benchmark events:

Basic design and pre-posting - mid-July
Group review (in Bilbao, mid-July, in parallel with AB2010 transporters meeting)
Alpha test - to 1 Sept.
Alpha test results and review and fine tuning - early-mid September
Beta test program - Sept. - Dec 1999
Go on line - 1 Jan 2000

Next Steps: (before mid-June)

Create and post on test site the first "dummy home page" for comment
Decide on a working name for the site
Post on test site a support page with links to pages that show best and worst of this approach that we can take as examples, counter examples)
Create first set of test links for home page (to demonstrate principle and intended link approach)
Integrate within the site a common communications capability and archive (for future reference)
Put in a machine translation capability into site (so that the group can easily access and understand sites that may using, for example, German, French, English, Italian or Portuguese as working languages)
Begin to develop short lists of additional functionalities, objectives, etc.
Ensure that by the time of the July review meeting a first cut Alpha version of the site has been posted and iteratively reviewed and developed for at least several weeks

Some technical points of detail through Alpha test phase

Each page must load quickly (compact size, very compact graphics)
Must be intuitive and clear to user in a single screenful
Should make max use of icons and graphics to make best use of limited screen space and to reduce language dependence
All specific sites (modes, etc.) must be no more than one click away (at all times)
Should be laid out in a way such that the user always is able to come back to home site (one click) when they require additional information, communications help, etc.
Conservative design philosophy
Add additional functionality and sophistication each time only against firm tested base- with possibility of drawback if monitoring suggests

Also needed fairly quickly:

Register site
Begin to move toward a longer term plan for the common Web site/portal
Begin to bring in transporters and other key actors (parking, police, media, meteo, etc.)
Longer Term Issues, to do, or to keep an eye on:
Type and degree of interactivity
Multi-media (voice, video)
Hot line services
Sponsorship and advertising
More sophisticated uses of machine translation (for tourists, visitors)
Links to hotels
Links to kiosks
Interactive links with information providers (newspapers, media, etc.)
Eventual development of a user club (to participate in testing, debugging, etc.)

Strategic considerations:

Invite discussions, interaction and coordination with all related sites and providers in the region.
Retain ownership of all aspects of this program within the Forum as a whole (bearing in mind that it may eventually have considerable commercial value and that this should be available for the Forum as a whole to exploit, and not someone else)
Make sure that all Forum members see this as a useful complement to their own Web and related efforts and not as something which either competes or gets in the way of their own work and objectives
Keep all activities confidential until such time that the site is fully ready for more public exposure
Begin to bring in non-Forum members (example: other transporters) only once the basic Alpha frame has been agreed, tested and set.
Bear in mind that in June 2001, the eventual successor and beneficiary of this work will be in the first line of the attention of all who come to the Bilbao 2001 ITS Cities Congress.

AB2010 Entrada

Foro Electronico

Correo Electronico