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A few month ago I would have read your comment and thought that bus can't really compete for the fine grained point to point transportation. Then I went to Syd

A few month ago I would have read your comment and thought that bus can't really compete for the fine grained point to point transportation. Then I went to Sydney in December. The public transportation system there is super impressive. You have a location-based app where you can tell you want to go from point A to point B (from an address, a click on the map, your favorites), it will instantly provide you with many options, with time, duration and price, showing you where to take it from. It seems there are buses every 5 minutes. During the route the app will buzz you 2 and 1 stop before your actual stop. Oh, and the bus card allow you to take the light train and the ferry. You can also check your credits directly in the app, even recharge it I think. It changed my perspective on how to use public transportation. In Los Angeles for example I would check which bus/train I should take, download the timetable to see the frequency and where to stop. In Sydney, I got confident in a way that I would just stop caring about planning first. Just open the app and it'll tell you how to go where you want to go.

intopieces 9y ago
Hong Kong is this way, too. People gush about the train system in Tokyo (which I have love for) but the sheer number of fast, frequent, and comfortable ways to get around in HK edge it out for me. It seems like every 5 meters there’s a bus stop, and the busses are not old style clunkers but double deckers like Googles take.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  As a former HK resident, a lot of it is because of how impractical it is for most people to own and operate a private car. Returning to the US, it's car-culture and lackluster public transport was jarring.
kristopolous 9y ago
It's amazing how many other places have figured out how to make this work. Even in sprawling cities like Berlin, which was cut in half by a wall for 30 years, it's clean, well maintained, goes nearly everywhere and costs the commuter about as much as a tank of gas a week for unlimited travel. Americans have really failed to capture and maintain a civic imaginary.
SirZimzim 9y ago
My favorite part is the amazing train that goes into the suburbs into the city. Fast, clean, and cheap.
spike021 9y ago
Eh, you can do the same as most of these features you mention with normal apps. At least where I live in SF, Google Maps can tell you all the different public transportation routes, times, and fares, as well as a notification for when to leave, etc. The Transit app is also really useful for this. It's just the public transit systems that need improvement, but the rider side isn't too bad.
- mintplant 9y ago
  > The Transit app is also really useful for this. I was excited to try this, but it seems broken. Every pair of locations I give it returns "No routes found", even for stops that are directly connected by a single bus route that I can see in its database.
  - mintplant 9y ago
    Update: since reaching out to the developers over email, they've fixed the server bug causing this issue and the trip planner is working now.
ddoolin 9y ago
Oh man, wait 'til ya get over to Seoul/HK/Tokyo/<insert Asian megacity>. In Seoul particularly (maybe others, I only lived here), the government has opened hundreds to thousands of public APIs (e.g. transit; bus/subway current locations, timetables, routes, etc) for public consumption and there's now a ton of different apps to serve different needs and you're free to build your own if none suit you. Even nicer is that they've centralized all of it so you can sign up and manage access to all these APIs via a single platform. For the interested: http://data.seoul.go.kr/ http://data.seoul.go.kr/
cornholio 9y ago
There is an app for that, it's called Moovit and works in any city - the key thing being that there needs to be an actual functional transit system with solid timetables in place to get the Sydney level of service.
kang 9y ago
Vancouver is same in regards to the service but strangely the position-tracking of a bus is more accurate on mobile google maps than the official 'transit' app, although the former says the source of data is latter.
jacquesm 9y ago
Wait until you get to Bogota, the bus service there is nothing short of mind blowing. Buses arrive so fast you wonder if they are attached by some kind of invisible link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio Public transport as it should be, cheap, fast, reliable.

intopieces 9y ago

Hong Kong is this way, too. People gush about the train system in Tokyo (which I have love for) but the sheer number of fast, frequent, and comfortable ways to get around in HK edge it out for me. It seems like every 5 meters there’s a bus stop, and the busses are not old style clunkers but double deckers like Googles take.

Terr_ 9y ago
As a former HK resident, a lot of it is because of how impractical it is for most people to own and operate a private car. Returning to the US, it's car-culture and lackluster public transport was jarring.

kristopolous 9y ago

It's amazing how many other places have figured out how to make this work. Even in sprawling cities like Berlin, which was cut in half by a wall for 30 years, it's clean, well maintained, goes nearly everywhere and costs the commuter about as much as a tank of gas a week for unlimited travel. Americans have really failed to capture and maintain a civic imaginary.

SirZimzim 9y ago

My favorite part is the amazing train that goes into the suburbs into the city. Fast, clean, and cheap.

spike021 9y ago

Eh, you can do the same as most of these features you mention with normal apps. At least where I live in SF, Google Maps can tell you all the different public transportation routes, times, and fares, as well as a notification for when to leave, etc. The Transit app is also really useful for this. It's just the public transit systems that need improvement, but the rider side isn't too bad.

mintplant 9y ago
> The Transit app is also really useful for this. I was excited to try this, but it seems broken. Every pair of locations I give it returns "No routes found", even for stops that are directly connected by a single bus route that I can see in its database.
- mintplant 9y ago
  Update: since reaching out to the developers over email, they've fixed the server bug causing this issue and the trip planner is working now.

ddoolin 9y ago

Oh man, wait 'til ya get over to Seoul/HK/Tokyo/<insert Asian megacity>. In Seoul particularly (maybe others, I only lived here), the government has opened hundreds to thousands of public APIs (e.g. transit; bus/subway current locations, timetables, routes, etc) for public consumption and there's now a ton of different apps to serve different needs and you're free to build your own if none suit you. Even nicer is that they've centralized all of it so you can sign up and manage access to all these APIs via a single platform. For the interested: http://data.seoul.go.kr/ http://data.seoul.go.kr/

cornholio 9y ago

There is an app for that, it's called Moovit and works in any city - the key thing being that there needs to be an actual functional transit system with solid timetables in place to get the Sydney level of service.

kang 9y ago

Vancouver is same in regards to the service but strangely the position-tracking of a bus is more accurate on mobile google maps than the official 'transit' app, although the former says the source of data is latter.

jacquesm 9y ago

Wait until you get to Bogota, the bus service there is nothing short of mind blowing. Buses arrive so fast you wonder if they are attached by some kind of invisible link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio Public transport as it should be, cheap, fast, reliable.