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.

> So if there's a teen without a smartphone, they can't take the bus, nor can someone who's phone died, etc.

I feel very strongly that if a teenager is old and responsible enough to take the bus on their own, they are old and responsible enough for a smartphone. Furthermore, it's actively harmful to send your kids out into the world without the kinds of modern tools that would make them safer and more independent.

As for "phone died," well... just find a place to recharge it. It's not particularly difficult these days and I can't actually remember the last time my phone died on me when I needed it.

OP is a really cool demonstration of what we can do when everyone carries a computer in their pocket. Uber in the US has something similar with airport shuttles. Why should we handicap new, shiny things to make them usable without a phone?

Here in Germany it's fairly common for kids aged perhaps six or seven and up to take public transport by themselves. They might have a dumb phone or occasionally a smart watch, but I rarely see them with their own smart phones.

One of the most important principles of a public transport system should be that it's accessible to all in a lowest-common-denominator sort of way. Anything beyond that is also good to have, but if you don't have that basic level of accessibility, then it's not really a public transport system, it's a luxury transport system. And there are already plenty of luxury transport systems around.

Also, my last phone died on me fairly often, I don't think it's nearly as unusual as event as you're making it out to be.

And yet, nearly everything in Germany requires a stable physical address. Meanwhile, the state of the housing market is such that it's hard to get one.