Okay continuing my weekly idea posts is an idea to compliment ACTION buses service. I say service in the loosest sense of the word as buses in Canberra are horrible. The problem I see is that Buses are inconvenient because 1) you have to walk to the bus stop, which may be nowhere near your house 2) you have to walk to your office anyway since the bus doesn't stop nearby and 3) slow as they have to past bus stops where they don't pick anyone up.
So my idea is this -
1. Users log on to my service and register their ideal bus route. This is a route that they will take 10 times a week (return), typically to their office and home.
2. Other users do the same
3. Then the computer works out the ideal bus routes for the registered users.
We use some of those mini-buses ACTION has and work out the minimum number of people we will need to run this service. It shouldn't be too hard to programme as there is only a few routes in Canberra corresponding to the city centres (Woden, Tuggers, City, Belco, Gunners etc). It's like the Nightrider service but more regular and automatic (and hopefully cheaper)
The benefit of this system is that the Bus can pick you up from your house and drop you at your office. It's convenient and it minimises the cost to ACTION. They only need to run services where people have registered.
The problems are an issue or marketing. As usual technology is easy, it's getting users to use it that's the problem. We have to have enough people register for the service in a particular area that want to go to the same rough area. Unless the critical mass is achieved this service will fail
But then anything is better then cutting $6 million from the ACTION budget.
Comments
Sort of like the Flexibus Extreme idea I came up with back in 2005.
The reason NightRider works is because there's a central point of departure, and it leaves on a defined schedule. You hop on the bus at the Civic interchange, tell the driver where you're going, and the driver takes the (somewhat) optimal route.
The problem with this system is you're trying to go from n starting points to m endpoints, on an unknown schedule.
What about ad-hoc users? People that just wonder to the bus stop from the shopping center? Or drunk people.
What about people who don't have access to a computer? (yes, they do exist...)
Wow I really should read the archives! Anyway, we don't care about ad-hoc users. This is only for registered users. Normal bus services will still operate. Eventually more and more of ACTION would be part of this automated system.
As for the technical issues, it should be fairly easy. When I was in Melbourne I caught the bus from the airport. They took me to a depot where they split every one into smaller buses and took them to their hotels. This was all decided on PDAs. Now this system was probably fairly simple as, like you said, it starts from one point. But as I said it's getting enough users to be able to have opitmal routes that is the challenge