public transport, solved at last, possibly

[alan2here]

I got this idea after waiting ages and having to walk quite a way to travel home in an empty a decaying and otherwise empty UK buss. Of course having a nice bus is more expensive and more of them is obviously a problem as well, but with a bit of technoligy there could be a solution.

 

How about a system whereby people messege a central controll there current and intended destinations, the system sends them a neerby place to walk to and the time untill they need to be there. A bus then turnes up, much better condition than any current UK public busses, which should be almost full of people after the current people have got off and people waiting have got on. People can't just turn up to get on, they much connect to the system and tell it what they want to do. When you get off at the destination specified you are then messeged what to do next, which may involve another bus or taxi etc...

 

The system would need to perform a complicated task, more than a little pathfinding and scheduling. It needs to find the most efficent routes to send the busses, the most efficent times for people to get on and off and where they can sensibly walk given an ever changing set of reqests. There may in extreme cases even need to be smaller taxi like vehicles deployed.

Edited August 7, 2010 by alan2here

[Mr Skeptic]

The only way to economically improve public transport is to have many people use it. The public transport in Paraguay, for example, beats any I have seen here. There's buses showing up every 5 min to 1 hr or so depending on the path its taking. You can get within a few blocks of anywhere by taking the buses. In fact I think that a lot of poor countries beat the US in terms of public transport.

[insane_alien]

i'd use buses more often if they actually turned up on time.

 

last time i decided to use public transport it took me over two hours to get a bus. this is on a route where there is supposedly a bus every ten minutes.

 

now, a few(4) buses did turn up, but every single one of them had the not-in-service displaying.

 

as a result i was quite late and would have been quicker walking to the trainstation(a few miles away) and then walking from the trainstation at the other end (another couple of miles) than taking the more direct route of a bus.