In an Ideal World...

Given our existing technologies, if we could start from scratch, what would an ideal transportation system look like?

In 2003--pre-smartphone, mind you--University of California Civil Engineers asked a similar question. They said, "we've been dreaming of 'dial-a-ride' since the 1970's; now that everyone's got a phone in their pocket, if we could somehow flip a switch and go from what we've got now to something else: what might that 'something else' look like?" Their proposal was comprised of a network of many small shuttles responding to actual demand in real-time. Using existing demand for public transit throughout Orange County, CA as their subject, they created a simulation of a Demand-Responsive Transit (DRT) system that produced a service that was nearly direct, door-to-door, with a maximum wait time of 10-minutes, and one transfer per ride. That one transfer allows the shuttles to hub dynamically, generating a transit system with network effects (!). They called it "High Coverage, Point-to-Point Transit." I call it "Hub and Bespoke" shuttles.

This team, being civil engineers, thought of this strictly in terms of public transit, and worried that service this effective would increase demand beyond the system's capacity, compromising performance.

But if you view all of transportation as a market, this model presents several enormous opportunities.

Services

The database required to power such a network of shuttles adds value to a system, and is therefore a business opportunity. Mass transit (specifically, bus) systems don't need to be run by public agencies. Commercial service providers could compete for transportation demand on such a platform. Imagine a robust market of providers, some with luxury coaches with interiors like a private jet; others with bare-bones vans for the more budget-conscious rider.

Payments

Modern information and mobile communications technologies could be leveraged to enable targeted subsidies. Instead of throwing huge (yet still inadequate) sums of tax dollars at enormous public agencies with antiquated service models and--in their defense--impossible mandates, government(s) could subsidize specific rides, or all rides for specific cohorts (e.g., students, the elderly, etc.).

What I've labeled "targeted subsidies" are another opportunity: this same platform would enable myriad stake-holders to pay for some or all of any ride:

• Employers, just as they compete for labor with other premium benefits, could subsidize rides to/from work, or even generously provide all-encompassing subscriptions to pay for any ride anywhere, for the employee, or even their whole family.

• Similarly, any destination could offer their patrons partially or fully subsidized rides. Imagine a movie theater including a free ride with your ticket purchase on Fandango, or a restaurant district offering an ad hoc shuttle service for lunch to nearby workers.

Data/Advertising

"Data is the new oil" may be overstating things, but in this case, a comprehensive, data-driven transportation system would incentivize end users to share to the cloud what may be the last wild dataset, namely who wants to be where, when. UBER has only recently capitalized on the advertising opportunities of their relatively limited, real-time location data; imagine the possibilities when we've captured  a critical mass of the general population's location data in advance.

Real Estate

The value of any property is a function of accessibility. The platform that drives this system will become a configurable map of transit hubs, and a market wherein property owners compete with each other to be hubs rather than spokes, to unlock more productive and aesthetic uses for their newly liberated parking facilities.

In This World...

...we're not starting with a blank slate. In my next post, I'll detail how this vision can actually take shape in the Bay Area.