Bus stops here: Shanghai lets riders design their own routes

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.

I think this is one of those ideas that sounds good on paper but breaks down in practice.

One immediate problem that comes to mind is that you need a smartphone to take public transit. So if there's a teen without a smartphone, they can't take the bus, nor can someone who's phone died, etc.

One of the amazing things of the current system, as simple as it is, is that it's predictable and doesn't require coordination. You can walk to a bus stop and know that a bus will arrive and take you where you expect to go, same as the last time you've taken it and the time before that. You don't need to look up a map to see what today's route is, or to see where the stop is, or to let the bus know you're waiting for you. You just show up at the bus stop and the rest just happens in a predictable and reliable fashion.

> One of the amazing things of the current system, as simple as it is, is that it's predictable and doesn't require coordination.

In many cities, the exact opposite of that has been true in my experience. I’ve waited at bus/train stops only for it to be 20+ min late or never show up multiple times per week. The unpredictability makes it infeasible as a means of transportation to getting to work or anything time sensitive (e.g., sporting event or show downtown). This is a much bigger problem in smaller cities with rudimentary public transit, but I’ve also experienced it in larger cities like Philadelphia.

IME this is only a problem really in American cities because we put as close to zero effort into public transit as possible. We just plop buses on the road and expect that to do something.

I did also have this experience with the London underground during strikes, but it wasn't a surprise and we could still see when trains would arrive. So, much less unpredictable.