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Bus stops here: Shanghai lets riders design their own routes

(www.sixthtone.com)
491 points anigbrowl | 1 comments | 14 May 25 04:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | source
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jillesvangurp ◴[14 May 25 06:33 UTC] No.43981512[source]▶
I like this; it's smart. It's a low tech solution that simply coordinates transit based on demand and self optimizes to serve that demand.

The value of buses and trains running on schedule is mainly that you can plan around it. But what if transit worked like Uber. Some vehicle shows up to pick you up. It might drop you off somewhere to switch vehicles and some other vehicle shows up to do that. All the way to your destination (as opposed to a mile away from there). As long as the journey time is predictable and reasonable, people would be pretty happy with that.

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throw310822 ◴[14 May 25 06:54 UTC] No.43981629[source]▶
In various countries there are private vans that ride along the normal bus routes, marked with the same numbers as the buses. They work exactly like buses, collecting and leaving people at the stops, but they're much smaller and usually more frequent. I always thought they were an excellent solution- I don't get why there shouldn't be anything in between big, rare, and shared public buses and small, on-demand, individual private cars.
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grumpy-de-sre ◴[14 May 25 07:08 UTC] No.43981710[source]▶
I'm not really aware of many rich countries that operate minibusses in urban areas. The bulk of the cost of operating public transport is labor so there's a strong incentive to scale.

Now if we get Waymo style self driving minibusses, that'd be great. But if the running costs for full size electric busses aren't too dissimilar it might just make sense to standardize on larger automated busses for increased surge capacity.

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throwaway2037 ◴[14 May 25 11:02 UTC] No.43983046[source]▶
Hongkong has an extensive mini-bus network -- the green tops (regularly scheduled and more tightly controlled) and the red tops (the wild west). Also, Tokyo runs mini-buses in the (richest) central core between areas that don't have connecting subways & trains.
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thenthenthen ◴[14 May 25 15:58 UTC] No.43986072[source]▶
What is the difference between the red and green tops? In my experience the green ones are kinda wild as well, stop and go anywhere, super interesting. Too bad my Hongkongnese sucks.

Edit: Bisrepita shared the info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_light_bus

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1. throwaway2037 ◴[14 May 25 17:03 UTC] No.43986818[source]▶
Hat tip to Bisrepita for the earlier share.

In my experience, red tops can do almost anything they want -- they can deviate from the planned route in any way that they wish. Also, most only accept cash (is this changing?). Green tops are pretty strict about stops and accept cash or local metro card (Octopus). On a deeper, urban explorer level: The red tops have waaaaay more aggressive drivers. It feels like GTA sometimes.

When riding a mini-bus, you only need two words of local language (Cantonese) to make it stop: 有落 jau5 lok6 ("yau-lok"). (You need to really shout to be heard over the revving engine.) For green top routes, use Google maps. They will guide you on what green top to take. Example: If you want to go hiking in Sai Kung, take the 101M green top mini-bus from Hang Hau metro station to Sai Kung pier. (Google maps can provide directions with the bus info.) Red tops are more adventurous and should only be taken if you speak/read more than a few words of Canto (50-100 words is fine).