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by mattm
4147 days ago
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I lived in Nairobi for the summer of 2004 (in Buru Buru for half the time and then in Kibera on the map) and I would have loved to have this information at the time. Taking the matatu into town was always a fun experience. I came just after they implemented strict laws that limited passengers to the number of seatbelts. This opened up business for a lot more matatu operators but congested the roads. Before there may be double the number of people per matatu standing or hanging off the sides. It was incredible to me how each matatu basically had its own personality. Some would be quiet like riding on a normal bus in North America. But then you would have the party matatus that would be fully painted and blasting out music at 9am in the morning and the tout would be lauging and joking with all the passengers or singing. I was on an exchange program and stayed with host families. While waiting for matutus to take us into town, even though there were so many, they basically recognized all of them. I would say, "What about this one?" and they would say that it was going somewhere else or that you can't trust them. At night, when coming home there was usually a 30-60 minute lineup just to get on one and then it could take another 60 minutes to get home when the normal time was just 20 minutes. |
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I wonder... Aggregating this data and presenting it in a single app is tremendously valuable but does it also preserve knowledge about these forms of "local color"?
Can I see which routes are party buses, and which have quiet (and wifi)? Can I review them and keep track of which ones are sketchy, or clean, or have bad drivers, or are newer vehicles?
You could argue any transit system should let your rank and favorite routes, though the difference in quality between one route and another is not normally that significant on first-world single-operator systems. Although every major city usually has at least one locally-infamous nightmare route...