logoalt Hacker News

thanatos519yesterday at 7:16 AM2 repliesview on HN

Yes! Just use an app to say where you want to go, and it tells you which of the 3 nearest bus stops to go to, and you get where you want to go reasonably quickly. No bus routes, just dynamic allocation and routing based on historical and up-to-the-minute demand.

If you tell the system your desire well in advance, you pay less. "I need to be at the office at 9 and home by 6 every weekday". Enough area-to-area trips allocate buses. Smaller, off-peak, or short-notice group demand brings minivans. Short-notice uncommon trips bring cars. For people with disabilities or heavy packages, random curb stops are available.

Then you remove private cars from cities entirely. Park your private car outside the city, or even better, use the bikeshare-style rentals. No taxis or Ubers, only public transit, with unionized, salaried drivers. Every vehicle on the road is moving and full of people and you can get rid of most parking spaces and shrink most parking lots.

It's not rocket science. It's computer science.

Fantasy, because it would allow us to drastically reduce the manufacturing of automobiles.


Replies

rich_sashayesterday at 7:23 AM

I suspect it's a pretty hard optimisation problem if you want to be lean. And if you want to overprovision... you end up with something that looks a bit like status quo.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love for this to exist. Just, as someone with optimisation experience, it seems pretty gnarly.

show 2 replies
aembletonyesterday at 9:07 AM

Citymapper tried something similar in London a few years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/21/citymappe...

I'm not sure what came of it; but I guess it didn't get adopted by the TfL so it never really became part of the transport system of the city.

show 2 replies