Fatema wrote a beautiful piece on Gobd app the other day. There are reasons to be excited for having GObd app but at the same time there are enough reasons to be skeptical about the effectiveness of an app to solve Dhaka’s traffic problem given the fact that no amount of information can potentially solve a problem caused by something else other than information.
Lack of information is not at the core of Dhaka’s traffic problem: it is infrastructure, regulation, and transportation. If infrastructure and other things remain unchanged how much GObd will be able to do in solving traffic problem? The chance is it will rather create an optimization problem by feeding same information to a set of people who will be taking same route again.
[blockquote source]If infrastructure and other things remain unchanged how much GObd will be able to do in solving traffic problem? The chance is it will rather create an optimization problem by feeding same information to a set of people who will be taking same route again.[/blockquote]
To solve Dhaka’s traffic problem at a level we need regulatory intervention and more public transports. It is more about a systemic improvement. If we want to solve it with technology we’ll need something more powerful and substantial, may be some sort of flying cars capable to run on solar power can help! That is too far off an option and anybody hopefully will not take it seriously!
[blockquote source]If we want to solve it with technology we’ll need something more powerful and substantial, may be some sort of flying cars capable to run on solar power can help! That is too far off an option and anybody hopefully will not take it seriously![/blockquote]
Being at the center of data GObd has more than one option to contribute to this space and this is not the time to predict whether GObd will become something indispensable or not. We will have to wait for awhile to see it. However, an app that only feeds people with information and route suggestion does not make me hopeful.
[su_note note_color="#f8f9f9" text_color="#25618a" radius="13"]Note: This is more of a discussion piece, if you feel otherwise you can write a response to this post that we will run happily. [/su_note]
