Transit for the Eight or Eighty-Year Old

Our current public transit systems require the user know many things to use it effectively:

1. Which route is near me, and offers the best service?
2. Which way do I need to go? North or South? Uptown or downtown.
3. Which side of the street or station should I wait?
4. Do I transfer? To which line? Where is the transfer point?
5. How often does the line run? What time should I go to the stop?
6. At what stop do I get off? How do I know if this stop is the one needed?
7. How late does the line run? Should I hurry to make the last run?
8. Does this route still run to my destination? Has the routing changed?

Would you trust your eight-year old to navigate such a system? Could your eighty-year old grandmother keep all this in mind?

If you were eight years old, how would you design a transit system? What is the simplest method you can imagine to navigate a public transit system? The simplest transit system would require the user to know just one piece of information - where you are going.

Personal rapid transit is the only system I know of that that can be designed for such an easy user experience. All you need is the station ID of your destination. The system then figures out what route to take. There are no transfers. It doesn't matter which way your vehicle starts out - it will turn around if needed. The system runs 24 hours a day and strives to keep a vehicle waiting for you to use - not keep you waiting for the vehicle to arrive. The destination could even be encoded on a swipe card so all a user needs to do is pass the card in front of the reader and their home station is automatically selected by default.

Can you imagine a city-wide system where any eight year-old can enter any transit station, swipe a card, and be transported directly to their neighborhood transit stop? No intermediate transfers. No schedules to consult, no stops to watch for. Swipe your card, get in the vehicle, get off in your neighborhood, and walk home. It doesn't get much simpler.

How about the convention attendee who is told to go to the airport station and punch in "D120" to be carried directly to the stop nearest their hotel? The next morning, they punch "D114" and are carried directly to the station located inside the convention center. No transit route maps. No cab fares. No car rentals. No navigating an unknown city. The convention organizers could even send a pre-programmed swipe-card to the attendees with fare already pre-paid!

This is the future of public transit. This is personal rapid transit.