Transportation

When cars are moved because of things like parades or movie shoots, drivers often have no clue where their vehicles are, and now one city lawmaker is looking to change that.

Manhattan Councilman Ben Kallos is pushing a bill that would require the city Transportation Department to notify 311 and put information about relocated cars on its website.

Drivers would then be able to visit the website or call the city's helpline to find their cars.

That's the way it currently works when a car is towed to an impound lot for a normal parking restriction.

Kallos tells the Daily News he decided to introduce the bill after his disabled mother's car was towed several blocks from her home, and was covered in tickets once she found it.

When you hear about big data, you might think of nefarious data brokers selling your browsing history or governments demanding logs of your phone's GPS coordinates. But the data that overwhelms our modern world is just as often being used for good and can improve our lives in completely banal ways we don't even notice—like making the buses run on time.

At least that's what New York City Council Member Ben Kallos is hoping open data from the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) could do.

Kallos represents Manhattan's Upper East Side and his constituents, like most New Yorkers, complain that MTA buses are frequently late (read a previous Fast Companyprofile of Kallos here). But when Kallos forwarded complaints to the MTA, the agency would respond that the problems don't exist and a particularly vocal subset of his constituents must be exaggerating.