Mass transit

Cities hold people. People move.

Personal motorized transport is broken.  Cities need safe, clean, reliable transport.

Many apps support current transit systems including real-time arrival estimates. One feature which has been lacking is the ability to predict or at least display load factors on vehicles at various times. Load Factor reflects itself in standing time.

On heavily-used transit systems different routes may require a different amounts of standing as well as walking and travel time. In general we tend to ignore the cost of standing however there is a large and growing segment of the population, the elderly for whom standing in public transit is difficult if not dangerous.

Overcrowded Vehicles lead to elderly persons standing in unsafe situations.

Ideally society would solve this problem by producing young who happily gave their seats to the elders. sadly this is not the case. Whether it ever was is a question of some debate.

In any case, the question arises whether Google (or someone else) can compute the load factors using the information gathered from users on the buses.