Slashdot Mirror
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.
Weapons systems, contractors, aerospace, telco, medical equipment, computer software (with free NSA inside). :)
The USA has basically settled into a top 10% doing engineering work for top $ and having it "made in China" or Laos or Indonesia.
Great if you have a double degree paid off or generational trust fund. So the products are been created, just not from the USA beyond design.
The US has the software, talent and creativity to rule the world but the world is moving on to more fun things
The world dreams of small busses not another export shipment of boondoggled small US tanks for their generals to park at a base.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
point is, it's cheaper than cab.
do you know how much a cab costs in finland?
EUR â 5.9 for first 0Km(that's right just getting into the taxi is 5.9 euros)
and then EUR â 1.52 per Km (1-2 passangers).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Well, let's suppose that the innovation had come from the USA. The first thing the media would want to know is did a black or jewish person come up with the innovation. Next they would want to know what impact this will have on the economically disadvantaged. Next what kind of liability issues this innovation will entail. If this innovation is going to be competing against another well entrenched business, you can bet the entrenched interests will lobby local governments to get the 'innovation' quashed. So yes innovation does not come from the USA.
Heck you can't even really compare the USA to Finland. If Finland were to suddenly be magically transported into the heart of the USA, you would have 10000 lawyer and politicians descending on the new state of Finland, and demanding why the entire states is so backwards and racists. There just isn't enough diversity in the state. There would immediately be enacted a series of laws that would withhold / take away money from Finland untill it became more ethnically diverse.
Hint: an innovative American transportation company is mentioned in the first few words of the summary.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Kutsuplus's price is 3.50 € ($4.73) + 0.45 €/km ($0.98/mile). For cabs, base price is 5.90€ ($7.97) € or 9€ ($12.16) depending on the time and the price per km is 1.52 € - 2.13€ depending on number of passengers ($3.31 - $4.63 per mile). The price for single mass transit ticket (inside Helsinki) is 2.80€ ($3.78) when bought from the driver and it's good for 60 minutes (or 80 minutes when bought from certain busses).
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.
"The bus fare here in Finland varies between cities (it depends on amount of municipality aid to operator) but generally, single adult fare is 3.8 USD to 4 USD (and price doubles at night) and you may be allowed to use the same ticket again within certain time perioid (1 hour or so)."
I'm from Luxembourg, Europe and here too lots of small towns have also a call-a-bus system like that.
But you just use the regular tickets for it, it's 2€ for 2 hours, no matter where.
Lots of people use it to get to doctor's appointments or to places where parking is either expensive or rare.
Obviously lots of seniors use it too.
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!
Only if you try to get everything wrong wherever you can. Apparently Helsinki is an expensive town regarding mass transit. Mass transit here is available for $2, is faster than by car and all stops have roofs. To summarize:
1) 6:00-21:00 the waiting times are 5min for a single line and less if you can choose from more than one line on your route.
2) Every stop has a roof so you don't need to worry about rain.
3) Most of the time you are faster by feet than car (3 lanes) if you are inside a circle of 5miles radius around the city core and mass transit has their own lanes (one dedicated lane in the middle of the road), too.
4) 3 doesn't include time to search for a free parking lot. You can avoid that be renting your own for 65$/month though (on the cheap end).
5) Running costs, insurance and taxes make a car far more expensive than mass transit's monthly tickets.
6) You can read, play or do other stuff with your smartphone while on the ride.
Just because your government fails at so many levels it doesn't mean the rest of the world needs to follow.
No, not at all. They just assumed that if a bus takes too long to reach its destination, some passengers would get off and say, "Screw it," until the number of endpoints reaches a number for which the computation becomes feasible. :-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Meanwhile in 80 km southwards, in Tallinn, mass transit is free for registered inhabitants of the city... and nope, you don't summon buses. In former Soviet Estonia, buses summon you. :P
In Tallinn, it makes sense to fund the bus network from general taxes, because only local residents are going to use the bus network: the area that tourists confine themselves to (the port and the Old Town) is so small that they don't really need to use buses.
In Helsinki on the other hand, the tourist attractions are quite spread out, so you get a lot of tourists using public transit, and if you have to keep the army of ticket inspectors working to check up on them, you might as well maintain the fare system as it is.
That said, public transportation is heavily subsidized for those who can prove they are Helsinki residents, and a monthly pass for unlimited use costs only around 40â, which I feel is reasonable.
Such call services are usually buses that run a fixed route on a fixed schedule, and htat will not run if there are no passengers (that is, if no-one called in to say they want to take that bus). This Kutsuplus runs on demand, on the time you ask, the route you ask. It's more like a shared taxi service.