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by janfoeh 404 days ago
It's a crossover between busses and taxis; they operate on demand like taxis, but only get you roughly the most direct way (they can drive detours to pick up other passengers on the way) in a roughly predetermined amount of time (a 20 minute drive usually takes about 20 to 30 minutes due to the detours) from roughly where you are to roughly where you want to go (they are only allowed to stop on a virtual grid of bus stops spaced around 250 meters apart).
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> a 20 minute drive usually takes about 20 to 30 minutes due to the detours

That variability makes the whole system much less interesting once a change is involved, e.g. if the on-demand shuttle is only supposed to operate across the local area, but not for longer journeys traversing the whole city, especially if the connecting fixed-route transport runs less than every few minutes…

Or even without changes, but when you have some other external schedule constraints, because in those cases you always have to budget for the longer journey time, negating the benefit of direct routing somewhat.