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Finland's Algorithm-Driven Public Bus
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Where's the Uber-like interactivity for getting a bus to come to you after a tap on your cell phone? In Finland, actually. The Kutsuplus is Helsinki's groundbreaking mass transit hybrid program that lets riders choose their own routes, pay for fares on their phones, and summon their own buses. It's a pretty interesting concept. With a ten-minute lead time, you summon a Kutsuplus bus to a stop using the official app, just as you'd call a livery cab on Uber. Each minibus in the fleet seats at least nine people, and there's room for baby carriages and bikes. You can call your own private Kutsuplus, but if you share the ride, you share the costs — it's about half the price of a cab fare, and a dollar or two more expensive than old school bus transit. You can then pick your own stop, also using the app."
If Obama has his way, this is what we will wind up with in the USA. Please, please understand that all wealth is created in private industry and the government is a leech on society.
I'm Jonnie cab!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Now, I am not trolling, but can some one tell me what innovation haas come from the USA in recent years? It all seems to come from countries afar!
It is a bus, sooner or later someone else will be on board and you get routed anywhere.
That was put online long ago on Astronomy Picture of the Day. Thanks to a bunch of stupid people (you name them) we cannot see that any more!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Only a dollar or two more expensive than "old-school bus?"
Numbers weren't in the article as far as I can tell, so where does this come from? How can anything billed at $5 + $0.60/mi be cheaper than a typical bus far? Just the starting price is more than a round-trip in a lot of cities...
Finland must have some cheap cabs if cab fare is only double a dollar or two more than the bus fare for any non-trivial commute.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
but with vans
I have shared many van cab's though out the years, especially in smaller countries, split the cost and used a phone to schedule a pickup. Other than a name change so taxi's cant do anything about being undercut by the government, whats the news?
They must have solved the travelling salesman problem.
FCKGW 09F9 42
With any luck, our government will also tax our gas to the point where paying $10 to wait for a bus in the rain and then ride in it with random strangers for an hour all over the town will make more sense than driving directly there in comfort of your own car in 15 minutes. And who says innovation comes only from the private sector!
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
They should do the same thing with trains.
I don't know why this is news, you could do this around 15 years ago, with only exception being that you had to call them instead of using a smartphone app (I actually used similar travel to go to school for couple years around 98/99).
Silicon Valley had that from 1974 to 1976. It was called "Dial a RIde". It was a popular service, but too expensive to provide. The hope was that there would be enough people going in roughly the same directions that the small buses used would fill up. But it turned out that there wasn't enough commonality of destination. Everybody wanted to go some place different, and the buses often had one passenger.
Most successful van systems have a common source or destination - a school or airport. Without some concentrating factor, cabs or cars are more effective.
Actually the lead time is zero. If you're standing at the bus stop, and suitable bus is near, it arrives as quickly it can drive there.
A system can not be "public" if it is discriminating against people who don't carry mobile phones that can run the app that is required.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Disclaimer: I am actually a former coworker of the researchers who created the planning algorithms running the system.
I've used the system quite a lot, and I can tell you that there are several scenarios where it is way more convenient than traditional public transportation and much cheaper than the traditional taxi service. The most common scenario is when you want to travel crosswise related to the public transportation trunk-lines which start from the Helsinki center and go radially outwards. Often in the traditional public transportation this means you need to switch the buss/train-line at least twice and it also takes relatively long time. Another common scenario is when you have multiple people who don't have the local swipe-card for public transportation. In that case, especially on the routes crossing the zone borders, it is actually cheaper to use Kutsuplus. I admit that in countries where taxis (and private/public transportation) are not insanely expensive, unlike in Finland, there is really no need for this kind of service.
I'd say the closest thing to Kutsuplus I have seen anywhere in the world are the airport-cab services that collect people from different hotels and take them to the airport, and in those you usually have to order the cab several hours before the pick-up time.
at night when the normal busses dont travel any more you can call a special cab which picks you up at a bus station and drops you off anywhere you want (in the city limits) for a fixed price. However here the lead time is much longer (30 minutes).
Driving always entails risks.
But if you put 1000 cars/buses on the road, driving under your algorithm, you are going to kill people.They might be your fault, for not programming perfect, or they might be completely unavoidable. Either way, there is no way to estimate how the public (read media) will react and who they will hold responsible. Even if you are completely legally un-responsible, that does not mean your life will not be ruined.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Have gnu, will travel.
...Finland's Alcohol driven public bus... somehow that sounded more likely. And I'm not talking about fuel.
Such a service would be very useful in rural areas, indeed. :-)
For now, though, Kutsuplus is piloted within Kehä I, AKA the perimeter of civilization around Helsinki
I tried the service shortly after it was opened to the public. It's awesome. You can track your bus in a mobile browser in real time. On a screen inside the bus, you get ETA information for your destination (possibly after other passengers' stops if they get out earlier).
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.