BusTimer: An android based application for generating bus schedules using crowdsourcing

Abstract

The fast growth of Indian population has triggered a greater need for well-organized public transport service. Surveys show that approximately 53 million persons travel through almost 400,000 buses twice daily. Often women are seen taking private transportation at night which really compromises their safety. We did some survey and found that most of the women prefer to take public bus transport during night time, but they are forced to take private transport due to lack of an easy means to check the bus schedules. In this paper, we describe and evaluate an android based application that uses crowdsourcing technique for generating bus schedules, even for short distance travel. The system uses the android accelerometer for detecting the bus stops. Then GPS is activated and the coordinates of the stop are sent to the server. The server runs a scheduling algorithm and updates the schedule. And whenever a user of the application enters the source and destination, the corresponding bus schedule will be displayed. The system is implemented and tested using the crowdsourced data populated by twenty five volunteers, as they travelled by public bus transport and the results proved the superiority of the system.