Public Transport sucks
but it’s where Africa will teach the world another lesson. m-Transit after m-Pesa
Just missed the last bus after running like a sprinter? Arrived late this morning despite an epic scramble to secure a seat in the bus? Stuck in a Matatu, hopelessly waiting while the driver stops every mile to pick up riders? Don’t get mad. Public transport sucks: it just wasn’t designed to care about your schedule.
As an entrepreneur (AyWa Markets), what i value most is this unique ability to look at the world with fresh eyes and take on some of the most complex problems from first principles. Very often, I realize that the challenges we have to live with today, are simply the results of historical compromises. When those constraints are no more relevant, the sector is ripe for disruption. This is the case with Mass Transit, particularly in Africa.
The Rise of Mass Transit
Back in the 1850’s, shared transport emerged, promoted by exponentially growing cities in Europe, to channel millions of commuters by train and horse drawn bus services. Half a century later, the introduction of private cars and invention of large scale manufacturing (Ford Model T — 1913 & Assembly Line ) had no impact on the mass transit trend and initially private trains & bus services could not keep up.
Historical fixed setup vs. today’s dynamic cities
Government had to step in, and come up with something cheap, often subsidized. It was almost a “gift” to the masses. Therefore, from then on, routes, stops and schedules were pre-defined. It was up to the rider to adapt. If he missed the last bus or train, it was his fault. He should have run faster, depart earlier, reschedule his rendez-vous, find an excuse to his boss…
This still somehow works if the city’ growth is planned. But in Africa, real-estate developers just pick the first available place. A slum can quickly become the city’s most trendy area where new hotels, restaurants, schools, stadiums etc… attract millions of riders. How can that “Grand Station” built in the 60’s still be relevant to channel the traffic to the latest hotspots that sprung up just few quarters ago? At best, it just forces them into a bottleneck, before getting to really needed routes and destinations.
Tracking the vehicles but demand blind
Overtime, the urban population grew past the wildest assumptions and the most responsive cities had to up their game. If they could track Buses and Trains it would help add more of them and alert the stations in case of impacting changes or emergency. The GPS came in and went mainstream; transport signaling/routing became more and more sophisticated.
But even here, the technological shift was still around the vehicles. A bus tracking GPS won’t tell you how many riders are waiting at a station, who they are or how to contact the relevant ones timely. Even today, at the age of iOS & Android, the best transit apps simply help riders “better adapt” to a rigid system. They can buzz you to hurry up when leaving home, they give you incoming bus/metros and even alternative options in case you miss a transfer…but they barely scratch the supply side which has remained historically rigid.
Diversified offer but still missing the rider’s schedule
At some point, transporters realized the need to diversify. Some introduced bigger buses. In most crowded cities in Africa, the motorbikes phenomenon emerged. But still the evolution is about vehicles’ capacity. In Africa where vehicles are rarely manufactured from, this trend had even more dramatic effects. Riders need to fight to get into the bus at rush hours while for the rest of the day, they need to wait for hours for the bus to fill up.
How can a fixed capacity vehicle tackle such a bumpy demand. If the vehicles were actually designed around riders demand today, they’d certainly be more or less assembled pods. At peak hour, multiple pods would be added on the “main unit”. At off peak, some pods would be unplugged (less consumption, less stops, etc …). Form follows Function.
A new man in town: the mobile phone.
Public transport sucks because it has historically been designed around everything but the rider. It started as a public “gift” to riders, then evolved fixing the “easiest” elements: routes, corridors, vehicles capacity. Designing around riders is complex. Some need a guaranteed arrival time. others can wait as soon as it costs less. Others value most comfort with frequency. Back then, there was simply no way to capture and organize this demand flavors.
Enter the mobile phone, which the large majority of riders carry everywhere, anytime. Riders with similar needs (proximity pickup/drop off, corridors, timing, costs, frequency, comfort….) can easily be segmented under the same “ride plan”, just like telco’s segmented airtime plans. Why fixed stations when users can simply check-in to the closest proximity, trendy hotspots and get pooled within the same plan? Why running after the bus when the plan itself comes with the right schedule specifically designed for its subscribers’ timing?
After m’Pesa, m’Transit. Africa will teach the world a lesson, again.
The opportunity in Africa is that legacy, Government-run transport companies have mostly collapsed. Informal transporters are known for their cockroach style resilience and flexibility, ready to leverage any opportunity. Cashless PSV initiatives and Transit apps haven’t addressed the real challenge: gap between dynamic demand and historically rigid supply. This gap is what Ay’Wa dispatch has been designed to fix, accross the continent…but that’s another story.
