App Chatter

The Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV) runs my local bus, tram, and railway service (all of the Wiesbaden-Frankfurt region).

Today, via our regional public TV folks at HR.....RMV announced that we (customers) will soon be able to view a site via our laptops or smart-phones, and see if the bus, tram, or train is 'full'.

RMV wanted you to avoid that uneasy feeling as you set off at 6:55 AM....reaching bus 'X' and finding it 99-percent full to capacity.  They also wanted you to avoid that uneasy feeling at 7:14 AM at the station, where you boarded the train to Frankfurt, which was filled to 99-percent capacity (that includes standing room).  And later at 8:04 AM in Frankfurt, they wanted you to avoid the uneasy feeling when finding the bus to your job is 97-percent full (standing room capacity).

So they went and hired a software company to develop an App....which looks at 'pictograms' and figures people per square meter, and then has a way to relate this to you (the user)....then to suggest to you 'alternate' routes.

Across the entire system?  NO.  They basically picked the worst and most congested routes, with 59 buses fitted with the cameras/software, and 56 trams/S-Bahn trains fitted.

The problem here is that you have a patchwork system, which on any one single day....because of a break-down or weather....you suddenly have 30 minutes (maybe even two hours) built into a 75-minute journey. 

Adding to this....it doesn't really matter how much App you throw at this issue....most all trains leaving from Wiesbaden from 7 AM to 8:30 AM to Frankfurt....are filled to capacity anyway.

Furthermore, I can state from 6:45 AM in my village, virtually every single bus is filled to capacity (standing room) until about 8 AM. 

So the App is not really telling you anything really great or new.  You could ask a thousand Wiesbaden folks about the 'trip' to Frankfurt each day and they'd spend a good long 30 minutes talking over their frustrations and hostility. 

The alternate angle?  That's fine but lets be realistic....at the bottom of the alternate route suggestion....there's probably a little info screen that says you just added 22 minutes to your morning journey if you take the alternate 'way'.

The humble observation here?  There is only so much 'good' you can do with Apps, and then you reach a point where 'good' cannot be accomplished.

(Note, I am happy over the App which tells me the  nearest public toilet when traveling around in Germany....since 50-percent of public toilets since the 1990s have been shutdown)