Fledgling Birdj! Fledgling Birdj!!

Here's the funny thing about living in the information age - no sooner do you have an idea, than you find out that, not only has someone has thought of it,  but they've fleshed it out and put into practice long before it ever popped into your head. That's how it felt when I read this article, anyway. Not 24 hours before I read this piece, I jotted down a quick sentence in my notebook which read simply, "Uber-like service for public transit?" Well, seems like I was once channeling the collective unconscious, because it turns out just such a service is about to launch in Boston.

The new service, called "Birdj" (I assume that's pronounced like "birdie,") aims to use the vast quantities of data regarding the travel habits of smart-phone users to make bus routes more predictable and efficient. The basic idea is to crunch all this data about the most used routes and direct buses accordingly. It's an interesting approach, although not really enough to disrupt public transit as we know it, I suspect. For one thing, the interaction with passengers is still passive. The algorithm might be able to predict the most traveled route near me, but what happens if that changes? It seems possible that users could suddenly find themselves without a nearby bus stop.  A better approach my be to use smaller vehicles that can be summoned actively by users.

At any rate, it's still in its "fledgling" phase (to lift a terrible pun from the article), so the system will likely change as it runs into real-life problems. Ultimately, it may well find a quick work around for obvious problems like the one I just mentioned. Even if it doesn't, I'll still need to teach myself how to program before I can offer an alternative. Until then, I'll wish this venture godspeed and hope someone with more skills is tuned into the ether enough to pick up what I'm laying down.