A pilot study: Shuttle bus tracker app for campus users

Abstract

Many institutions of higher learning provide shuttle bus service to students and staff to and from between public pick up point and campus for their convenience. However, such service is not receiving positive feedback as users have to wait without any clue when the bus is going to arrive. Furthermore, the time schedule posted on the University website is often inconsistent. Hence, providing the accurate bus arrival time is important as it can reduce waiting time at bus stops as well as to decide on the travel plan. The proposed shuttle bus tracker app aims to minimize waiting time by incorporating features that allows commuters to know the location of the bus in real-time, to make query about the arrival time of the bus as well as to provide real-time traffic update about the shuttle bus routes. The app calculates the bus arrival time by getting the location of the bus chosen and the bus stop then passing their coordinates to Google's distance matrix Application Programming Interface (API) web service which returns the time to travel from the selected shuttle bus location to the chosen bus stop. The Google Maps Distance Matrix (API) is a service that provides travel distance and time for a matrix of origins and destinations, based on the recommended route between start and end points. In order to achieve the main aim of this study, a pilot test was conducted and test results suggest that the proposed app has achieved its objectives.