A Dynamic Bus Guide Based on Real-Time Bus Locations -- A Demonstration Plan

Abstract

Motorization liberated our life from timetables of the public transportation. As the cars became more affordable, the buses became more unpopular and less frequent. Too many cars flooding on the streets caused heavy traffic jam, which made the buses even more unpopular for their arrival got almost unpredictable. Now the bus transportation in small cities has only sparse and unreliable timetables. That forms a negative spiral for our community to keep losing efficiency in both fuel and time. Even though we cannot operate buses punctually to a fixed timetable, we can still operate them precisely relative to a dynamic timetable that is based on the location of buses actually running in real time. This dynamic timetable will be a first step toward regaining popularity for the buses and breaking the negative spiral. This paper presents our project of implementing a dynamic timetable of buses in a small city in Japan. Each bus carries an Android tablet with GPS and 3G wireless connections. The tablets transmit the bus positions to a server. The server shows the real-time bus locations on a map and also predicted future locations. Passengers can check this dynamic timetable to plan their travel.