Re:Estonia plans to become a free public transport nation
by simonebrunozzi on Saturday May 19, 2018 @10:34AM
(#17108031)
Very good points.
Some partial answers/comments (my 0.02):
1) You can measure competing bus companies by revenues, or in the case of Estonia by other metrics (e.g. number of rides (assuming you can track passengers, perhaps with cell phone apps), satisfaction, "on schedule" rides, transportation coverage).
2) I actually don't believe that buses are the right type of public transportation, going forward. There's a chance that it will be cheaper to offer self-driving cars instead. I am not too optimistic about driverless cars "time to market", however you can constraint the complexity of the problem if you have a) Fixed routes, and b) specific vehicles / sensors (e.g. how to deal with snow in Estonia), paired with a great maintenance service (again, if the government can provide an SLA on snow removal, you can assume that as a reduction in complexity).
Some partial answers/comments (my 0.02):
1) You can measure competing bus companies by revenues, or in the case of Estonia by other metrics (e.g. number of rides (assuming you can track passengers, perhaps with cell phone apps), satisfaction, "on schedule" rides, transportation coverage).
2) I actually don't believe that buses are the right type of public transportation, going forward. There's a chance that it will be cheaper to offer self-driving cars instead. I am not too optimistic about driverless cars "time to market", however you can constraint the complexity of the problem if you have a) Fixed routes, and b) specific vehicles / sensors (e.g. how to deal with snow in Estonia), paired with a great maintenance service (again, if the government can provide an SLA on snow removal, you can assume that as a reduction in complexity).