Infotropism Kirrily Robert’s blog

The best public transport system in the world?

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Port Vila has what is, arguably, the most efficient public transport system in the world.

The main way of getting around, for the locals, is by bus. Don’t think of a 40-seater behemoth; what we have here are mini-buses that seat around 10 passengers, some on fold-down seats, with a sliding side door. They’re identified by a number plate starting with B, and most of them have some kind of sign painted on them proclaiming their busitude.

You can stand anywhere on the side of the road and wave one down. Just ask the driver if he can take you where he’s going, and chances are he’ll nod his assent. Climb aboard, and you’re off on a sometimes scenic tour of the city.

(The above is not a bus. It is a scenic highlight; specifically, the market on the harbourfront at Port Vila.)

Now, Port Vila’s small, and even a bus trip that goes some way out of your way to drop off other passengers probably won’t take more than 10 minutes. Most of the time you’ll find you can go almost directly to your destination, and the driver will drop you at your door. And given that you never seem to wait more than about 60 seconds to catch a bus, the inconvenience of detours seems pretty minor.

If you’ve got a large group of people, or want to get to or from somewhere awkward, you can get the phone number of a friendly driver and make private arrangements. Yesterday, we did this to get a party of about 12 people to a beach on the outskirts of town, stopping by every person’s house in turn for their swimsuits. When we were done swimming, the same bus came and picked us up.

How much would you expect to pay for this sort service anywhere in the developed world? Here in Vanuatu, a ride anywhere in town is a simple 100 vatu: about one US dollar. To go outside the city to surrounding villages, or for special services, 200-300 vatu is the norm.

There’s also a taxi system, but I’m buggered if I can figure out why you’d ever use it.

Want.

I have a case of serious lust over those woven leaf baskets. I’d ask you to bring me one, but I know they’d never get through customs. Could you take a close up for me, though?

The flag-a-minibus concept is reasonably common in small to medium-sized cities outside the first world I think. This sounds pretty similar to the Iaşi system except that you need to be able to speak Romanian to get far with the drivers in Iaşi.

Unless these are different minibuses from what I have in mind the reason to use the taxis is that you have a lot of luggage. (Divemasters—as in dive guides, not masters of secret dive foo—in Thailand have been known to rent an entire minibus to themselves to get from the airport to their work. In Iaşi they wouldn’t leave the city boundaries for us either, so we used taxis for that.

Quatrefoil: is this close enough? If not, it’s easy for me to take more.

I’m also meant to be visiting a village on Pentecost in a few weeks, where a friend of a friend’s mother will teach me weaving. Be assured there will be photos!

Something very close to this minibus concept is described in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language . If you haven’t come across this book it is a hugely influential approach to architecture and urban planning. And yes, it inspired the concept of Design Patterns in software.

Man! You wouldn’t believe the number of attempts it took to get the above url to display properly.

brucef: I haven’t read the physical book “A Pattern Language” but I’ve had a good trawl through the parts of it that are online, eg. http://downlode.org/Etext/patterns/index.html

Never saw the thing about the buses but I see it’s here: http://downlode.org/Etext/patterns/ptn20.html

The book is much better. The web pages just summarise the problem and conclusion without any of the explanatory discussion, which is about 90% of the text. Plus diagrams. I highly recommend reading the book if you are interested in urban planning (is there such a thing as an urban planning geek?).

Mmm, I should try and find it in a library I guess. I suspect it’s one that I’d want to own, except that I can’t really afford it.

Fantastic picture of the Vila market - I’m dying to get back to Vanuatu, where I lived for two years as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer (on Paama Island). Thanks for sharing your observations and pictures from the islands.