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Obtaining Real Time Transit Info?
remolacha asks: "I am working on an EU initiative to create small-scale demand-driven public transit (minibuses + GIS + logic + SMS gateway for people to request transit) in rural Ireland. Our plan is to connect several small towns that have no public transit to a bus stop served by a national carrier, so as to enable residents of these towns to reach the two neighboring cities (20 miles in each direction, which have jobs, universities, etc). The thing is, no one wants to be dropped at a bus stop without knowing when the next bus is coming (buses don't come that often here, and schedules aren't reliable.) We'd like to provide real-time information on when the next bus is coming, as you see in some large cities. the problem is our project is so small, none of the companies that make these systems will even give us a quote. so my question for Slashdot is this: is there a homebrew or inexpensive way to set up a display at a bus stop that will tell users when the next bus is coming from a city 20 miles away? There are hills involved, so line of sight isn't an option."
GPS unit from RS plus some bits to tie into a GSM phone and send GPS co-ordinates over GPRS every few minutes. The bus stop's sign would just download the information from the same server you uploaded the GPS co-ordinates to.
Simple and used by numerous people / companies already.
I grew up in Schull, West Cork - don't talk to me about the Bus schedule from there.
Two or three buses a day out of the place.
One on a Sunday! The day I got a car was one of the happiest in my life - the sad thing is I prefer to use public transport, but it just isn't an option in some parts of Ireland!
Jay
If you give me your EU grant money, I'll design a solution for you!
Are you sure that real time data is the way to go with this project?
The arrival time would have to be calculated from the speed of the bus, either averaged or real time. Both would be inaccurate in the context of Irish roads. Irish road distances, both on maps and signposts, are INCREDIBLY wrong. Not inaccurate, just plain wrong.
I've driven all over Ireland and the best way to know how far and how long it's going to take to get from point A to point B is to use experience.
Just get the drivers to punch in an estimated arrival time. It'll be right to within five minutes. Their tachys will show whether they were right or wrong.
The drivers of the buses are going to have driven that road before, in those weather conditions, at that time of the day, in the current traffic conditions. They'll know if Mackey the dairy farmer takes his cows across the Miltown Malbay road at 11.30am EVERY day. They'll know if the Oughterard road floods at this time EVERY year and you have to go "the back way".
If you're standing at a stop there is NOTHING more annoying than seeing a delay tick up. If you use realtime data then the times are going to vary wildly depending on the speed of the bus at various moments. If you average it will just be plain wrong, in the west of Ireland there are a lot of sections of bendy roads followed by straight road, this is because a lot of the roads were laid out during famine times. The roads just meandered along, not really going anywhere, the workers didn't care how long they were, they just wanted to get paid and fed. There are roads that go on for miles before just stopping dead, in the middle of nowhere.
For my mind, the best solution would be to let the drivers estimate. It would also be a better solution cost wise. Just get the estimate transmitted to the next stop.
sic transit biscuitus
Just a few thoughts off the top of my head. HTH. YMMV. HAND.
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
My not knowing the area is an understatement, but here's an idea.
Wi-Fi at (or around) each stop. Have a device, old laptop etc on the bus that sends out a "here I am" type ping through Wi-Fi and the internet which is received by a central server which can identify the access point of origin (by IP address maybe?). As the bus drives around, a "location" will be sent at each stop to the central server, which then can be used to calculate and transmit an ETA to the other stops.
As a bonus, you may be able to provide "open" Wi-Fi at the stops for the customers, although your market may not be tech savy enough to take advantage of the service.
No reason you could not have other "hotspots" along the route if you need additional tracking points, as long as the bus is in range long enough to "handshake" and send the signal.
Co-Lo hotspots with local businesses or residents.
Do I really know what I am talking about here? No, but it may work.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
anyway couple of points to make:
somebody mark the parent poster as a troll and put me out of my misery please... BTW this poster reminds me suspiciously of one of my current students
If each bus had a CB radio, they could periodically announce their position to a central office. Then people can call the central office to check where the bus is and get ETAs. Maybe local radio stations could announce bus information along with traffic/weather/news.
Sure, it isn't tecnologically cool, but most public transportation already has an office, a phone number, and maybe a radio.
A suggestion:
Maybe the bus drivers all have cell phones, already. They could program a speed dial button for a voicemail answering system. When they arrive at a stop, or a landmark, they could press a speed dial button and say, Bus 6 arriving at stop 17, [town name], [time].
If bus drivers don't have cell phones that work in the area, they would have to call from pay phones along the route. This would be convenient if they were stopped for a few minutes. It is possible to buy inexpensive devices which play back a series of tones, so that the drivers would not have to enter the digits by hand.
Bus riders would call the voicemail number, and hear the recorded messages. The speed dial buttons would not only call the voicemail number, but also pick a voicemail box, and erase the previous message. So, bus riders would choose the voicemail box corresponding to their area.
The disadvantage of this is that some people might have to pay a toll charge to call the voicemail system. The advantage is that the service might be close to self-financing.
Some answering service systems have almost unlimited mailboxes, so other messages of interest to the community could be programmed, also. For example, a sign at the town hall could say, "If you want to know the location and date of the next [town name] town meeting, choose voicemail box 230." Or, a sign could say "Anyone wanting to know how Mrs. O'Leary of [town name] is doing in the hospital, call voicemail box 1472, and enter access code 241."
People say good things about the free Asterisk telephone system software. Here's a quote from the web site: "Asterisk provides Voicemail services with Directory..." You would need only an old computer, since Linux and voice don't require much CPU speed.
One computer could handle a very wide area, and many bus routes, I think, because each message is very short.
Messages could be more detailed than just time and place. The bus driver could say, "Stopping for unscheduled maintenance at [town name]. Running late about one hour."
With considerable programming, people could leave their number to be called when a bus arrives at a particular town just previous to theirs.
Just publish a central GSM number, and let customers call it. The centre can contact the driver by whatever means possbile (e.g. GSM), and ask what his ETA for the stop is. No overly complicated technical solutions necessary.
You might talk to the folks at NextBus who offer that sort of info for San Francisco's Municipal Railway. (You can check my stop if you want.) They are probably too expensive for your situation (I suspect they're out to make money) but they might at least have some advice for you.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
I don't know of a homebrew setup, but I imagine there's a lot of work involved.
:)
but to see what a commercial solution is like, check out the "web watch" on MY busline.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
the more your solution sounds like a taxi service.
I think you are trying to be too high tech in your solution. The way I see it, based on your post, there are two options.
1. If it is a minibus that runs a scheduled service, then put up a poster with the schedule on it.
2. If there isn't a fixed schedule but, rather an on demand arrangement, then use a central dispatcher like taxi services do. The rider calls the dispatcher to request service and the dispatcher tells them when the bus will be there.
Electronic scheduling boards that update in real time, like they have in big cities and airports, are wonderful. But, minibuses and taxis have been running fine without such amenities for more than 100 years.
Here's [PDF file] a good article about the technology.
..one would possibly need real-time information is because they're a terrorist.
Ireland you say? Are you associated with the IRA?
No biggie, we're tracking you via RFID already.
Religion is for people afraid of going to hell.
I work for a medium size public transit company in Southern California. All of our busses are fitted with a gps and Siemens TransitMaster system.
We are starting to implement signs like you are talking about at some of our bigger stops (ie, "Route 45 - Next bus arriving in 10 minutes") They also have a web module that you can use on your company's web site.
I'm not sure how much the system costs, but I know that they supply some of the other municipal bus systems around here that are much smaller than us, so they should be able to help you.
http://www.sts.siemens.com/
visit www.whereismybus.com> , which shows bus locations for Rutgers University.
The distances are smaller than those you are suggesting, but replacing the radio link with celluar or something similar may work.
just remember to change your browser ID, since it 'only works' with Netscape and IE.
Each pallet was tagged with an 802.11 RFID-esque tag which would broadcast it's info every 30 seconds or so for it's lifetime (about a week). There was a unit placed inside each truck which could capture the RFID info and spool it up, then use a GPS to grab it's position and connect out via the GPRS network to our server with all its info. We captured the data and could plot the shipments around the US.
You don't really need the RFID tags in your example, but you do need some unique identifier assigned to each bus. Add some way for people to connect to, say, a website and request info about a particular route and you're pretty much there. Heck, with a little effort you could probably even predict when the bus should arrive (not just where it's at now).
I'm sure we could probably design and build something in your price range. http://uslinux.net
http://www.nextbus.com/
They company is called nextbus and they are being used a little in the bay area. Basically they use gps to track the busses and they you are supposed to be able to see when then next bus is going to arrive by looking at their map. They have wireless access to the system. I think this would work for you, but I also believe that this is a small company that has no european ties, so they may not be able to do everything. However looking at what they are doing, it is not that difficult to setup gps on your busses and have them transmit where they are, and map that to a static map, that people can then download or get text timings from. No, really, this is something a BSEE / CSEE senionr project could consist of almost.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
But for real-time trafic info rather than for transit. Tripcheck recently even added a real-time map of the only real metro area, Portland, with estimated speeds on all of the interstates.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Lookup APRS from the HAM radio world. GPS plus radio equals real time position reporting. Some of the equiptment will also act as data repeaters so infrastructure is low and you may be able to use the HAM frequencies. Equiptment is becoming off the shelf. Add a laptop and a screen at the bus stops and you get a realtime map of the area with the location of the busses.
...and the link makes me doubt it, you could email me at kevin@doolin.com. almost all of our work involves linux, financial transaction systems, sms and web front-ends.
as i live in north co. galway, i'd be eager to see you succeed.
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Let the users ask when the next bus arrives by SMS. Already in use in Leicestershire.
My opinion? See above.