Buses operating along a main road– press a button on a bus stop in your local village and the next bus along diverts to collect you. Most buses won’t stop at most stops. If those buses can avoid actually going into those villages then average journey times and fuel use are both reduced.
In cities there might be more scope for smaller buses that wandered along a corridor (say Morningside to the East End of town via the south of the Meadows) and responded to calls from bus stops spread out all over the place. With a service running at five minute intervals there would be loads of buses going near enough to where you wanted to go that you would ever be waiting long even if the next bus along wasn’t able to divert to collect you.
I have a science fiction short story in draft (very early) about a couple trying to get somewhere using an intergrated public transport system that self-optimises and which as got caught on the cusp of two solutions to its current demand and keeps flipping from one to the other.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: a
Date: 2012-02-23 04:51 pm (UTC)Buses operating along a main road– press a button on a bus stop in your local village and the next bus along diverts to collect you. Most buses won’t stop at most stops. If those buses can avoid actually going into those villages then average journey times and fuel use are both reduced.
In cities there might be more scope for smaller buses that wandered along a corridor (say Morningside to the East End of town via the south of the Meadows) and responded to calls from bus stops spread out all over the place. With a service running at five minute intervals there would be loads of buses going near enough to where you wanted to go that you would ever be waiting long even if the next bus along wasn’t able to divert to collect you.
I have a science fiction short story in draft (very early) about a couple trying to get somewhere using an intergrated public transport system that self-optimises and which as got caught on the cusp of two solutions to its current demand and keeps flipping from one to the other.