FixMyPublicTransport

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Posted in Proposals 2009

Describe your idea:

FixMyStreet for different categories of public transport:

1. Problems with whole routes
2. Problems with one journey on one route
3. Problems with physical locations (bus stops)

Problems would both be reported to the companies responsible, but, more important, would become the hubs around which multiple people with the same problem could come together.

What Problem Does it Solve?

Two kinds of problem:

  1. Basic, ‘this bustop is broken’ problems, so long as transport companies and councils respond to fault reports.
  2. The collective action problem that stops all the people on a persistantly late train from working together to get improvements made.

Type of idea: A brand new project

3 Comments

  1. This has some small overlap with Hitch’n’Bitch (née Fix The Freakin’ Buses) from Social Innovation Camp Scotland: http://scotland.sicamp.org/?page_id=216 — particularly the “bitch” half which was for feeding back problems on individual routes, albeit more at the level of an individual bus right now (“there’s a really bad smell of piss at the back of the number 26”). I’m not sure whether they’re planning to continue that project, but there may be some useful cross-fertilisation of ideas.

  2. Dominic Campbell

    Hi

    Another @sicamp related comment from me.

    @kalv @laura_l @jaggeree @jennilloyd myself – with a helping hand from @memespring @coupede – pulled together a site called AccessCity in December last year at the second social innovation camp. You can read about it here:

    http://www.slideshare.net/dominiccampbell/accesscity-at-social-innovation-camp-december-08-presentation

    We actually have a working prototype of both the site and an iPhone app that covers some of the features of the site you’re describing.

    Add that to Hitch and Bitch and it’s almost there!

    Would love to talk more about how we could collectively build on all our ideas, efforts and skills to bring all this together into one successful project.

  3. Not sure if this is too tangential – but I blogged about the demise of rural public transport (where uneconomic routes cannot be subsidised) and whether twitter could help.

    http://tinyurl.com/nn9zpr

    Perhaps such could help fix transport routes where public services cannot be funded.