Power of AI: the Future of Public Transportation

What if buses didn't have predefined routes? It's an easy enough question to describe and, even without being steeped in the world of optimization, logistics, or even transportation, one can come up with many different visions of how a bus system without bus lines may function. That is the beauty and the curse of the question...

To actively optimize decisions of which bus goes where, when, and what services are available, an on-demand system is simultaneously vital and extremely difficult. Yet decisions made by such a system can be scrutinized by anybody who has ridden a bus.

In this talk, Alex Wallar described how such a transit system operates, how The Routing Company has been able to optimize the routes for thousands of vehicles in real-time, and how demand-responsive bus systems can pave the way for equitable transportation for all.