Online reservation system for San Jose street banners

[mthong]

The City of San Jose manages a street banner program that allows organizations to have custom banners temporarily installed on streetlight poles in Downtown San Jose and elsewhere to promote special events.

Currently the workflow for managing requests and installing the banners is entirely paper-based. This creates an arduous, time-consuming process for both applicants and for City staff who manage the program. For example, the map of banner locations consists of a 37 page PDF rather than a zoomable, clickable online map!

Ideally a completely digital version of this process would have three different components.

1. Front-end that allows applicants to browse banner locations and availability over time
2. Administrative panel that allows office staff to review applications, confirm bookings
3. Back-end that distributes work to facilities staff who put up/take down the banners.

A full solution is more likely to be an enterprise-scale project. In fact, the City is pursuing internal implementation of a system.

However, before that system materializes, Code for San Jose volunteers may be able to create a working prototype for at least one aspect of the process. Probably focusing on the front-end applicant experience would be most fruitful.

Please comment below if you are interested in working on a potential solution.

[Team-Tierra]

This is a great idea!

[howdoicomputer]

This idea makes me think of the Adopta program and how well the codebase lends itself to this idea. I looked through the PDF. Would there happen to be latitude and longitude coordinates for the streetlights squirreled away somewhere by the city, @mthong? That'd be needed for Google Maps API integration.

[golgistudio]

Here's an example from the City of Phoenix

http://dtphx.org/banners/

• Instead of adding a pole one at a time, would like to be able to draw a region around a group of poles and add them all at once.
• Would also like to be able to enter dates and see which poles are already reserved
• Some organizations reserve poles every year around the same time. Support creating accounts with standing reservations.

[mthong]

@golgistudio I see you've created an initial repo! Just wanted to be clear that my colleague is trying pursue a solution on the enterprise side -- maybe using Salesforce. I don't know how fast that solution will transpire, and I still think this is a neat project to explore, and it could possibly be used as an "interim solution." E.g. Even a customer- or admin-facing map-based reservation site that made it easier for the customer or admin to see what banners were already booked would be a huge help.