Could my bus service become app-based?

I have mentioned in the past my local Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) link, Connecting Communities, which conveyed me to and from the station at Stowmarket, connecting my village to the world. The pandemic has not been kind, with the service currently reduced to, effectively, a medical transport service. Even if I wanted to go to my office, I’d need to find some other way of doing so, as commuting is not one of the valid reasons for booking a ride.

However, there is a suggestion, no more than that, which might impact on my future use - the idea that a bus might be booked using an app, and computers used to tell the driver where to go and what route to take to optimise vehicle utilisation. The technology already exists, and has been trialled in Sevenoaks, seemingly successfully, and it strikes me that, in as rural an area as mid-Suffolk, something similar would work quite well, allowing for both advance booking and more spontaneous travel.

It also takes human misjudgement out of the equation - one of the potential frustrations of relying on people whose judgement might not be perfect. 

As scheduled, fixed route buses become less and less viable, the future of rural bus provision will come to rely more and more on DRT services, I suspect. Costs can be reduced, with smaller vehicles and volunteer drivers, although, in reliability terms, you’d want a core of professional staff.

But first, I’ve got to work out how I’m going to get to Ipswich...