The Minibus
Monday, July 10th, 2006A friend and I have bandied around an idea to change the world, and we have gotten quite passionate about it lately. I think he sums it up best:
“In trying to solve the energy and transportation problems of America I have come up with a dynamic rideshare system. This system consists of a centralized computer that knows the locations and destination of each vehicle and individual that participates. It then routes the vehicles to pick up and drop off passengers in the most efficient path with a transfer or two to be expected by the riders. The vehicles would be privately owned with a GPS guidance system connected with a cell nework for routing.”
The basic idea is to get more people riding together, since right now the basic idea is that driving around your own car is the most convenient thing to do. And it really is, unfortunately, since public transportation systems are somewhat difficult to use, with schedules to learn and stops to restrict your travel. But with a dynamic ridesharing system, you can be picked up wherever you are, and dropped off wherever you are going. Payments can be made electronically so there’s no fussing with cash or change. All in all, I think it would be even more convenient than driving.
It solves many problems too, lets face it, the people who build roads can’t possibly keep up with the growth with us driving private vehicles everywhere. Even if they had unlimited funds, they couldn’t do it. We could give them unlimited space, but then there would be nowhere to drive to, nowhere to live. No, someday we won’t be driving personal vehicles, and that’s a fact we can’t ignore. Either we can try to do it for as long as we can, and let our local economies suffer, or try to adopt a new system now.
The great advantage of the system we propose is that it works with our existing infrastructure. No need to build tunnels for a subway, or rails for a train. We simply start sharing rides, but doing it in a dynamic way, so that a person can get wherever he or she needs to go, at any time of the day.
If you’re interested in discussing an idea like this, please post your ideas to this blog. We’re more than happy to accept any ideas, or explain in more detail exactly what we propose.