Bus stops here: Shanghai lets riders design their own routes

China is the only modern country that has both the capability and the lack of bureaucracy to just do things like this. It's simultaneously amazing to see and a depressing reminder of how badly western societies are crippled by rules of their own making. It would take years to make a single new bus route in any city, I don't think I've ever even seen that happen.

> lack of bureaucracy

Huh? Chinese government is insanely bureaucratic.

It’s true that if there’s something the govt wants they enlist the entire bureaucracy in favor of that and make it happen rapidly, but just because the bureaucracy can be functional, and even effective, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

I mean, that’s basically the definition of a bureaucracy, which while some may treat the word as synonymous for inefficient or incapable, it really isn’t, and the Chinese bureaucracy is proof of that.