The growing ubiquity of smartphones offers public transit agencies an opportunity to transform ways to measure, monitor, and manage service performance. We demonstrate the potential in a new tool for engaging customers in measuring satisfaction and co-monitoring bus service quality. The pilot adapted a smartphone-based travel survey system, Future Mobility Sensing (FMS), to collect real-time customer feedback and objective operational measurements on specific bus trips. The system uses a combination of GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and accelerometer data to track transit trips, while soliciting users' feedback on trip experience. While not necessarily intended to replace traditional monitoring channels and processes, these data can complement official performance monitoring through a more real-time, customer-centric perspective. The pilot operated publicly for three months on Boston's Silver Line (SL) bus rapid transit. Seventy-six participants completed the entrance survey, half of whom actively participated, completing over 500 questionnaires while on board, at the end of a trip and/or at the end of a day. Participation was biased towards frequent SL users, who were majority White and of higher income. Indicative models of user reported satisfaction reveal some interesting relationships, but the models can be improved by fusing the app-collected data with actual performance characteristics. Broader and more sustained user engagement remains a critical future challenge.
Protecting women and children is one of the core values of the Islamic legal tradition. In Muslim countries religious, constitutional, and legal frameworks obligate the state to take special measures to provide protection to women and children within families and in society. However, despite such provisions, post-divorce maintenance rights are not granted to women in Pakistan and Iran. Family law enacted in Pakistan and Iran still differs in form and substance from what has been mentioned in the primary sources of Islamic law and from the previous articulations of early Islamic law scholars. Moreover, patriarchal notions of male authority are still sustained through law and judicial interpretations when it comes to the question of giving post-divorce maintenance to women. As a result in the absence of a welfare system divorced women are left in a vulnerable situation. Although in Iran, some financial compensation under the concept of Ujrat ul Misl (compensation for household chores) is given to divorced women, but it remains unclear whether the right to Mata’at-ul-Talaq (post-divorce maintenance) has been recognised under the family law. In Pakistan the law does not include any provision for giving women Ujrat ul Misl and Mata’at- ul -Talaq. Moreover in the absence of a welfare system, divorced Muslim women in both countries are left in a vulnerable situation. This article engages with plural normative sources and contemporary notions of human rights to make the case for family law reform and for awarding post-divorce maintenance rights to Muslim women in Pakistan and Iran.
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