[collabs]

One big dream I have is to have some kind of free of cost at the point of service micro transit -- my dream is basically uber pool without the uber. Vans about the size of a Ford Transit or even a fuller size bus up to 40 passengers that picks up and drops passengers where they are or where they want to go to all with the push of a button on their smart phone and lots of patience. The idea is to have a huge number of government owned public transit vehicles that don't follow any published route but dynamically change their routes almost like some kind of Google Maps or Uber Pool but all the data about where people take rides at what time of the day and where they go and where the hot spots we have are now fully available to the government to improve the fixed route scheduled public transit.

[rangestransform]

Much of the world has a primitive version of this but unionized bus drivers prevent this from being economical in the west. It’s absolute comedy that NYC has a full fleet of 40 foot buses operating on its narrow streets, obstructing traffic, and forcing drivers to reverse to make turns. I hope they go the way of the buggy whip maker when autonomy is good enough for NYC, they’ve been holding us back from having so many nice things including smaller and more frequent buses.

[selimthegrim]

Doesn’t LA have these?

[collabs]

As far as I know, the whole combination of:

1. free at the point of service 2. door to door service 3. reasonable wait time 4. not a pilot project with half a dozen buses or a limited time

has been done anywhere. I would love to be proven wrong.