Posts Tagged: "travel services"

Today, we’re taking a look at the needs of America’s urban rail systems, especially subways, to see what public transportation issues exist and how they might be overcome. The reasons behind subway system degradation are manifold and are much more complex than simple age-related degeneration. Poor management is cited in some cases, including the recent DC Metro shutdown, for an inability to respond to safety concerns. Low levels of funding from governmental agencies also hurt light rail systems; recent remarks from DC Metro’s board chairman Jack Evans indicates that the subway system needs $25 billion over ten years to ensure that it remains operational and safe.

Priceline has battled back from the dot-com bubble bursting to become the strongest selling stock on the S&P 500 with a market cap of about $66.8 billion. A number of the patents recently issued to Priceline Group companies protect technologies that make it easier to find the travel accommodations people need to enjoy their vacations or pursue their business needs. For example, more accurate search engine results for engines that have to navigate massive datasets to return suggestions to a user is the focus of U.S. Patent No. 8972434, entitled Multi-Phase Search and Presentation for Vertical Search Websites. This patent, assigned to Kayak, discloses a computer program product storing code executable to operate a travel reservation search engine with a query interface module to receive a user search input with a constraint, a constraint evaluation module that can generate queries configured to obtain fewer search results or achieve a quicker response time, and a website query module that executes the multiple queries.