If it can’t beat a bus, your transport tech isn’t all that smart

Ican see my nearest bus stop from my home office window, the red Transport for London roundel peeking over the top of a fence, half obscured by a lovely tall tree. Buses trundle by every five minutes or so during peak times, so when I need a ride all I need do is shrug on my jacket and go.

But that’s not good enough for tech companies: they think such buses could be “smarter”. Silicon Valley giant Uber is eyeing public transport while Citymapper has been trialling its own bus route through London – and it’s now expanding that to a ride-hail minivan service called Smart Bus.

Want a ride? Open the Citymapper journey planning app and, if you’re in the catchment area, you’ll be told where to go stand for the van to pick you up. It’s like a cross between a taxi and a bus.

There’s only problem: why on Earth would I use it? With the Smart Bus, I’d have to open the app every time I took a bus, going to a different “stop” that suits the driver. The low-tech bus – same place, same time, all the time – saves me steps and time.

At the same time, I can think of numerous places where the smart bus concept could be incredibly useful. Bus coverage has hit a 28-year-low in the UK this year, with some rural areas and smaller towns left without public transport. A hail-as-you-need idea could let rural Brits catch a ride when it suits, without operators having to send an empty bus rambling down country lanes when it’s not needed.

By all means, test the idea in London – it’s where Citymapper is based, after all. But tech companies are infamously great at replicating existing services, such as Uber’s “invention” of the minicab. Instead, it would be truly smart to take the idea where it’s really needed, to Britain’s underserved communities, where a bus – or three, as the adage goes – isn’t rumbling by every five minutes.