rahulprajapat9
commented
6 years ago Just documenting my feedback on these points And I think no one can come up with a so called PERFECT idea/system, improvement by continuous discussion is the key I think (They call it KAIZEN technique in Japan)
- That's precisely we discussed last night with Ed Manuel and Dennis. We also know that there is nothing new. That's why we thought to focus more on trains and providing valuable feedback to C2G. Also pattern recognition in the history data of DB, I know it might be a bit difficult to find stationary data i.e. the regularity in train delays with time, but if by any chance we find some kind of pattern, we create huge amount of value for car companies. On the top of it, this kind of analysis and predictive demand strategy is never touched by car companies, which makes the idea unique, freshly thought and innovative.
- It's a business use case issue and can be solved out easily
- That is the problem we are trying to address. How can we improve this surge in pricing kind of situation. If you remember, Dennis actually told a story last night about that tunnel thingy and taxi drivers were demanding 1000 euro for a trip, that's how we came up with our problem statement. A. Yes. Discussed last night at about 3 o clock. And we already decided how to improve it.
These are the points from Leo, via slack These points are quite good. We can improve our system Let's plan discussions after every 1 or 2 hours, we can discuss these points as well in next discussion
Prediction of delays during game day. This is nothing new. Everyone knows that on match days the trains and streets around the stadium and in the city are blocked. It doesn't matter if by car or train. You will be stuck in traffic in the end. And to predict it you do not need any data itself. Furthermore Google Maps already tells you how much time you will lose by car, and the SSB app will tell you about delays by train. We would just gather that information and display it in the same service.
Distribution of cars. Where would car2go park their cars. On match days the parking spots are already blocked in the morning. So in the night before the game, C2G would need to bring a certain amount of cars to the stadium and block them from use until the end of the game to ensure their parking. Not the best way to make business.
People driving other people around. You need a special license therefore. Furthermore, how exactly would C2G earn money there. The driver will be rewarded with free driving. So neither him, nor the pasanger are paying. And if the passanger would pay, than it is a taxi service which probably needs to be certified by the city. And with Smart this is no real use case. B-Classess would be needed and they are not in place at the moment.
Capacity. 60'000 people coming out of the stadium. Even if we would provide 500 B-classes, that would make a total capacity of 2'000 pasangers assuming that there are always 4 people traveling together. But where would you park 500 B-classes around the stadium. And what happens to the other 58'000 visitors?
Price. Taking a C2G during game day instead of the train will probably result in a price 10 times as high as just taking the train. As the streets around the stadium are completely blocked after the game, it would be very expensive to take a C2G. Furthermore, people already expect "problems" like that but I guess they do not really see them as a problem.
[4:11] In general, there are more things to think about again:
A. Train delays themselves. Looking at the S-Bahn and U-Bahn lines in Stuttgart, around every 5-8 minutes a train from the same line arrives at a train station. So we need to analyze if a certain route or line is currently facing any delays. We then need to inform the people BEFORE they will hop on the train that it would be better to take a C2G. But how can we know who will take a train? Like I said before, when I wait for a train at the main station in Stuttgart, it takes me more than 5 minutes to go all the way up and find a C2G in the middle of the city with nearly no parking spots in place, then to just wait for the next train to arrive.
B. If we wouldn't take the VfB use case, what else do we have where our service would offer benefits. Reading point A shows that we have a really high frequency of trains in Stuttgart. We would need an app and an exact assumption who will use which train and when he will use it to inform him via push notifications about delays or cancellations. Informing him when he is waiting on the train station probably is no benefit at all. And looking at the train stations in Stuttgart, I guess a majority of them are located so central, that there are no parking spots anywhere nearby to ensure that the way to the next C2G is faster than to wait for the next train.
C. Parking spots. Lets assume we do not have above mentioned problems. Where would C2G position all their cars if we identified the hotspots. If a train is cancelled there are probably more than 100 pasangers that need an alternative. Most of them are probably traveling alone (on the way to work, to the gym, etc.). So C2G should make sure that most of them will get an alternative through our service which would resolve in a demand for 50 or more C2Gs.
D. Costs. I guess the maintenance costs of distributing and organizing the C2G fleet the way we are suggesting is really high. Ignoring the infrastructural problems, you need a lot of personnel to distribute the cars. If you outsource the distribution by rewarding clients for doing this job, you need really attractive incentives. Let's say bringing a car to the hotspot area is worth 30 free minutes. How do we ensure the next user of the car will use it for at least a price that will cover the 30 minutes we just gifted? If he just drives the car out of the hotspot zone for 10€ we probably lost money and again have a car which is not located centrally.