Optimizing Transportation

The article "Bus, Bikes and Random Journeys: Crowdsourcing and distribution in Ivory Coast" in the last issue of Significance caught my attention mainly because it brings to light an interesting point in times of global warming - our transportation is very inefficient. We have so many big cars with one single passenger, empty buses and trucks going back and forth, just because oil is so cheap. We have developed so much our communication technology, but very little in terms of transportation, I mean, at least there are so many huge problems for which the solutions seems so possible.

So, with so many people traveling around, I have no doubt that this crowdsourced transportation of things is possible from the operational point of view. But then when you think that it depends also on the willingness of folks to engage, which requires incentives... oh, well, we are certainly not there yet.It seems we also need changes in our culture.

I saw the model in the article more as a theoretical mathematical model, too much of an ideal world. It involves an area of statistics that is mixed with math and computation, and to which I am not that familiar. But it seemed to be so far from reality. I recognize, though, that the effort put on developing such models is valid, as is the intention and idea of crowdsourcing the transportation, as is important the simple fact that we start talking about this sort of idea.

As a believer on the goodness of the people, I thought since the very beginning of the article, that a model was strange, not necessary and maybe if this ever happen it will not need a model. The desire of people to help and do good would alone make the system efficient. It would be like this: I am taking the train to Hamilton, from Toronto, so at the Union Station there is a place with packages to be delivered in Hamilton. Everybody knows about that. I get some that I think I can carry and take them with me. I think many people would not demand any sort of reward for doing this...

The Significance article does not have any math, it just describes the optimization problem. More detailed description is in one of the references.