Idea 46: Free Local Public Transportations

Today, I took the ferry between Wall Street and Staten Island. The view was simply amazing, blue waters and city landscape, under the bright sparsely decorated sky. I would say this is one of the must-do's for anyone visiting New York City.

Even more surprised to me was that the ferry is completely free, running every 30 minutes with heavy traffic, 7 days a week. Similar ferry in San Francisco, between the Pier 39 and Sausalito would have costed $22 round trip. Salute to the transportation department of NYC!

This got me thinking, why should we pay anything at all for local public transportation?

Local city buses, subways, ferries, should and can be made completely free! This would encourage every commuter to seriously consider abandoning driving, thus reducing our carbon emission, eliminating highway congestion, resulting cleaner air and better lives for all.

The online world has gotten used to free services with ads support. Why the same model can't be applied to public transportation? Make some creative use of the empty inner walls on the bus, in the subway, and in the stations. Free services will guarantee a huge spike in the amount of people taking these buses and subways, and thus the amount of eyeballs, which increases the value of these ad spaces also.

Let's learn something from the Staten Island ferry, and make public transportation free!

Idea 34: You Have A Friend In The Bed And Breakfast Business

Travel has always been a good business. Not to mention the host of online reservation sites, the more recent innovative services that brings social network into travel planning was pretty cool, such as mobissimo.

When travelling abroad, I like to stay at bed and breakfasts. My experiences with them have been nothing but wonderful. However finding a good B&B takes tremendous time. Why can't we have a full service B&B travel agency that plans the whole trip with the cost and quality that you know you can trust?

The idea is to develop an exclusive location-based travel planning that includes B&B lodging, local transportation and air ticketing. Let me call it B&B and Beyond.

B&B and Beyond will start with China, since we know where to visit and stay, how to get around, and the best deal to travel there. Want to visit China, for business or pleasure? Come to B&B&B China. Since you are our friend, we will treat you as so, let you stay at our house, drive our cars, and eat at our favorite local restaurants.

In fact, in order to become friends, we need to make sure we like each other. That's why we encourage you to send us an introduction, a photo of yourself, let us check out your personal website or Twitter stream. If we really like you, we may even do a face-to-face chat with you to find out more about you. That's right, because the service is so good, it is exclusive to our extended friends only.

B&B and Beyond will expand the friendship network through word of mouth and extremely welcoming family-style service, and eventually cover every major travel destination of the world.

photo credit Torley

Idea #8 - Air Nature

Regional airline that serves trips from metropolitan cities (San Francisco) to places of natural beauty, such as Lake Tahoe, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glaciers, etc.

The convenient, fast transportation, plus additional tour and lodging packages, provides unforgettable travel experiences, for those who do not want to go through the hassle to arrange their own trips.