David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*) on Nostr: If I had a few years of spare time, the open source project I'd really like to build ...

If I had a few years of spare time, the open source project I'd really like to build is a federated privacy-preserving dynamic scheduling system for transport networks. Something that presents a user interface where people say where they are and where they want to go (which can be from a phone, a bus stop kiosk, and so on) and it then routes them via taxis, busses, trains, and so on to their destination.

It amazes me that in 2024 we still have fixed bus routes. We manage to have busses going around villages and picking up a single passenger (one of the local ones was recently in the news because it cost over £100 per passenger to operate), yet have overcrowded busses at peak times. If there's only one person wanting to go from an outlying village to the middle of a town, arrange a taxi that takes them (at least to a park-and-ride, if not into the middle), don't make them wait 20 minutes for a bus that then takes 40 minutes to not pick up anyone from a load of other empty stops. If there's a big event in town that means 20 people from that village want to make the trip, send a bus.

Something that local authorities could roll out initially as a non-profit alternative to Uber, then add busses to, and then connect up to neighbouring authorities for longer journeys, and then eventually integrate national rail networks.