I was trying to get on the high-speed rail shuttle bus in Taiwan, and it kept coming by "full". Apparently they don't let on more people than there are seats. And that means if you aren't at the first stop, and it is a busy day, you just never get picked up. I waited for an hour and nobody let me on.
Finally I got on. Even though there weren't any seats, the driver still let us all on. And the people at the further stops as well.

I was thinking about this. The logic behind the regulation that every person has to have a seat is that the bus goes on the freeway and it is unsafe for people to not have seats. But obviously there are times traffic on the freeway is a crawl (like that night), plus there are no seatbelts on the bus anyway (like on most public transit busses around the world) so obviously they don't care enough for people's safety (versus the money it costs to install busses).

When is it good to have flexibility in rules? First-world governments often use examples of third-world countries to point out that rules are good for you (like in some countries in Asia and Africa where ferries get overloaded and sink). But I feel the driver did a good thing, weighing the risk of passengers without seats and the benefit of actually giving us a ride (I had been waiting almost two hours).

This sounds like a Philosophy 101 exam question. My answer would be 'Sometimes. It depends.'

If a seat is required but there are no reservations (this is how they solve this problem on high-speed trains in Europe -- all passengers must have a seat and to make sure of this, a reserved seat is required), then there should be capacity allocated such that some number of pick-ups can always be made.

Rules should be flexible when it is in my favor at the moment I need that flexibility. They should be strictly followed under similar circumstances. :-:

But how would you allocate capacity? To future stops, that is?

Apparently if you are a billionaire it works that way.

Hard mode: Figure out the expected ratio of passengers from each stop (also taking into account people getting off) and leave that number of seats open.

Easy mode: just leave a couple of seats open.

Problem is google isn't doing that for them. I find google has a more accurate schedule for busses than the bus companies, which don't account for traffic.

I guess in the future google can tell them how many people are waiting for which bus where.

I'm not entirely sure how google factors into this…

In a similar way to how google can do traffic on their maps ..

Which shuttle bus was it? (If you don't mind sharing that.)

Taichung

i have heard of (but don't recall if i've actually seen) some metros where they intentionally keep some train cars closed at the early stops to make sure there is room for boarders waiting at later stops.

by the way, what is a "high-speed rail shuttle bus"?

I don't think they have this in Japan, but Taiwan's high-speed rail system is modelled off the Japanese. As such, their stations are usually not in the city center, unlike the older TRA stations. So they had shuttle busses they ferry people from all over to the HSR station. They used to be free, now cost money.

In Asia one can lose their job and/or license if anything goes wrong with a bus operated by them when the bus is in violation.

Anyone who has traveled in Asia and seen how all drivers drive will understand this. More so with crawling traffic and the sudden stops.