Tech companies love to complain about regulators slowing down their innovation, perhaps forgetting that the often arcane looking rules may have purpose.
The trials comes at a time tech companies are eyeing mass transit and public authorities are struggling, TfL's halted all major improvements to the city's roads for two years amid a budgetary black hole that could hit £1 billion. This is Citymapper's third such attempt to not only direct, but deliver, passengers, alongside a bus route and a tie-up with a taxi firm offering shared cabs along fixed routes. "We're working on ways to make this accessible too, but it isn't available off the bat," says Ashtari, noting the larger buses Citymapper wanted to use are designed for accessibility. While there's space for guide dogs, the vans are not otherwise accessible for disabled people and drivers aren't trained to offer such assistance. The not-a-bus is an eight-seater Mercedes-Benz Viano, with rear seats arranged facing each other to encourage social interaction, Ashtari says - suggesting a surprising lack of understanding of how silently Londoners commute. "Think of it as a bus, because it has stops and can be shared, but think of it as a cab, because you can book it as close as possible to you on the network," Ashtari says. So rather than go stand at a bus stop and wait for one to trundle by, travellers book a seat in a Smart Ride vehicle at a specific time along a route shown in the Citymapper app. Citymapper says the regulations it faces have led to the mutant Smart Ride, a bus service using a van that operates like a ride-hailing app limited to a specific catchment area.
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