Waiting for BEST buses in Mumbai over the past few days has made me wonder why they mostly come together? There is a long stretch of time when none comes; then, at one go, 4-5 of them come together and sometimes, the same route buses come together.
The analysis I thought could be done by installing GPS devices that transmit location information to a central location in each bus. This would enable one to analyse what the real reason is – are there certain bottle necks that cause buses to bunch up or are bus drivers forming cohorts and starting at the same time?
Now, once the devices are installed, once can also make a) a consumer app or b) an information board at each Bus stop to inform passengers of when the next bus for a particular route they desire is going to arrive. The former would be a cool digital initiative by a government undertaking.
Not that this is something unique, many private bus operators already do the app not to menton the massive Indian railways has consumer portals offering this information for trains. The later is already implemented in many other countries – I saw a version of this way back in ’09 on the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick.
And, once the data is opened up, I can also plan my travel and/or analyse the bottlenecks rather than typing stupid blog posts :)
