81–90 of 98 posts
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According to a simulation in[1], If employed at scale, such system would have a mean order time of 5 minutes,a mean wait time of half a minute and a mean ride time of 1.5x of a direct trip. [1] http://www.floating-content.net/~esa/pub/files/jokinen-fists...
Neat. What's the variance? Being late 20% of the time despite leaving a decent amount of time before the mean wouldn't be great...
I stayed at a town in Turkey, Trabzon I think, where the whole town seemed to run on a related concept - the "taxibus". It was very low tech, based purely on flagging down a taxibus that looked like it was going the right way, but it worked extremely well. Price was reasonable, the town was full of them so it was easy to get a ride, and you got exactly where you were going unlike with a bus. I've been wanting to see…
Now this is interesting, when compared to Uber and the like. I imagine it requires a large ridership to be worthwhile (otherwise you're basically dispatching large cabs, but charging less), but it's a fascinating concept for large cities. I imagine there are downsides though - if you're using it to get to work then surely your journey time is variable?
I stayed at a town in Turkey, Trabzon I think, where the whole town seemed to run on a related concept - the "taxibus". It was very low tech, based purely on flagging down a taxibus that looked like it was going the right way, but it worked extremely well. Price was reasonable, the town was full of them so it was easy to get a ride, and you got exactly where you were going unlike with a bus. I've been wanting to see…
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Trains are faster if they're grade separated because they don't have to wait for traffic. Not waiting for traffic also makes them more reliable, especially during rush hour. If you can't rely on the schedule, you have to put padding into your schedule, which makes them effectively even slower. Trains are also faster because they have lots of doors and the passengers are waiting at the same level as the doors, and you…
The thing is "They're also smoother and so more pleasant to ride. " is the only thing on that list that's even remotely inherent to trains over buses. Yet you rarely see people arguing to improve the buses so the other things you mentioned aren't an issue.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem
I love this and have been in love with a similar idea for a while. Kickstarter-style charter buses - only when enough people agree that they need a ride from Area A to Area B will the bus be chartered from a company. You can have spontaneous bus routes, that get cheaper as more people join the route. Over time, when patterns start revealing themselves, you can build regular shuttle routes and put a big dent in the pu…
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If American public transportation fans would stop fantasizing about trains and instead do what really works for most people -- buses Trains really work for large numbers of people. A single NYC subway train can carry something like 2,400 people. A bus can carry something like 1/10 of that at best. Once you factor in the subway and local train services to New Jersey, CT, Long Island and Upstate New York you really, re…
Helsinki has a subway though. This is on top of that.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/10/the-ille... But those are not hip tech entrepreneurs...