Increasingly, public transit is viewing mobility startups as partners, not competition.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.citylab.com
In many places park and ride facilities are becoming so full that they discourage people from using the public transport. I have also heard from many people who don’t want to walk 5-10 minutes to their nearest local bus stop especially in winter or bad weather, or that the local buses take longer routes to heir destination. First world problems!
If ride share services were to plug that gap, as shuttles from the suburbs to the hubs, they could resolve not only the park and ride problem, but also the cost, if they are carrying a small number of passengers and get the route optimization right. The location based apps that show the location of the vehicles can provide some confidence in customers that the vehicle will arrive when expected.
Services like this add no cost to the community and eliminate the need for smaller hubs. They could in fact encourage more people onto public transport by making it more accessible at an acceptable cost. At the same time it generates more self employment opportunities, at least until these services might be provided by driverless cars. It’s an interesting concept that people may contribute to the demise of their own self employment, but progress means there will always be new roles replacing old ones and there are many new roles coming that haven’t even been named yet!
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