“The journey is the purpose”: A concept for public transportation as social transient space

The current paper presents a concept for turning the journey itself by public transportation into the travel destination or purpose. Its main assumption is that the more meanings and purposes are enabled on the way between starting location A and target location B in public transportation, the more people will travel together by this means and the more opportunities for interesting face-to-face interactions and business on the move will rise. The implementation of “the journey as purpose”-concept should rely on the development or combination of value-added service concepts carried by mobile intelligent agents in the background, which should turn the perceived “weaknesses” of the public transportation (i.e. many people traveling together, long waiting times, possibly long travel times, transfers and waiting for the next connection) into benefits and opportunities.