Obtaining Real Time Transit Info? 41
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 and a mobile phone (Score:5, Informative)
Simple and used by numerous people / companies already.
Re:GPS and a mobile phone (Score:4, Informative)
Re:GPS and a mobile phone (Score:1)
Can you put one of these in the display and one in the bus, and the bus automatically updates the display info. Or are these supposed to be driven with for example a PC which commands these to send messages? Or are these devices programmable to do these by themselves?
Ireland Bus!! (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Are you sure Real Time is the way to go? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Are you sure Real Time is the way to go? (Score:2)
Re:Are you sure Real Time is the way to go? (Score:1)
And why cannot software do this? Don't use time/distance/speed. Use experience: the average of the last 100 journeys from to here was Y minutes, so when bus reaches , advertise it in Y minutes time. Don't average over too large a window, so that it automatically adjust itself when busses travel slower in winter or there are roadworks nearby. Requires modest amo
Re:Are you sure Real Time is the way to go? (Score:2)
(hell, the busses arrive on time more often than trains.. and this is in rural Finland even during winter)
besides, if there's just 1 or 2 bus per day the thing that you need to know is something akin to "is it 12 o clock yet?".
Re:Are you sure Real Time is the way to go? (Score:1)
At least by making the drivers someway responsible (by making them notify the stops) the public can see when the damn things WILL eventually arrive.
I travelled on the Irish bus and rail network for over twenty years until I got a car. It's the worst in the world. I've been on buses that were two hours late leaving or three hours late arriving. I've waited for buses that simply never came. I've even wai
Re:Are you sure Real Time is the way to go? (Score:2)
A note about my Greek Bus experience that might apply here:
After experiencing the Greek (specifically, on Crete) bus system, I made up a new phrase and use it occassionally to describe the actions of my 2-year-old toddler: Having The Mind Of A Greek Bus Driver.
This translates to, "Not knowing what you're going to do until AFTER you've done it".
The bus driver sometimes stops, sometimes he doesn't, and you have to wait until after he was supposed to stop to find out what the decision was, even if you ask h
Re:Are you sure Real Time is the way to go? (Score:1)
If the system was designed to be intelligent and learn from previous journeys then it would become increacingly accurate as time progresses. It would be good if some form of traffic info was also used however I doubt that this is collected.
If
Re:Are you sure Real Time is the way to go? (Score:2)
The arrival time would have to be calculated from the speed of the bus, either averaged or real time.
If you collect data for a while before you put up the sign, then you should be able to establish reasonable milestones. E.g., when the bus hits point A, it's within 20 minutes 95% of the time and within 15 minutes 80% of the time. This will of course vary according to outside
Really need more info but, here goes: (Score:4, Interesting)
Just a few thoughts off the top of my head. HTH. YMMV. HAND.
Re:Really need more info but, here goes: (Score:2)
In the U.S., I know of at least one company (Cloudberry) that uses a dual celluar/satellite technology (use celluar if there is a connection, if not, use a satellite uplink).
These s
Wi-Fi? (Score:2, Interesting)
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 t
Re:Wi-Fi? (Score:1, Insightful)
Hello?!?
The last line of the article said:
Good luck in getting quality data.If all you need are simple pings, try something like HAM frequencies. You don't need the throughput, and line-of-sight is not an issue.
Re:Wi-Fi? (Score:2)
Flame-brained reply: Hello?!? The last line of the article said: There are hills involved, so line of sight isn't an option.
Good luck in getting quality data.
My Insightful response: Hello?!? Every oth
Re:EU initiative? (Score:4, Interesting)
The poster does say that this is demand-driven public transport i.e. minibuses and not Bus Eireann, so I doubt their IT group would be much help. I also think that this is going to be very limited rural coverage hence the issue with companies not quoting. From memory these minibus (and such like) services are organised very much on an ad-hoc basis which isn't suited to most scheduling solutions available (you've seen how accurate the DART times are?)
I agree with the yobb factor which isn't limited to you Corkies either. I would tend to agree with the early poster who suggested some form of sms based solution. How difficult is it for the driver to sms a bus-stop number (doesn't even have to be every stop, you could extrapolate as discussed above). Use the timestamp on the message. Then let people sms the stop number in and get a predicted arrival time...
Radio - Non tech solution (Score:2)
Sure, it isn't tecnologically cool, but most public transportation already has an office, a phone number, and maybe a radio.
Re:Radio - Non tech solution (Score:2)
A suggestion: Have bus drivers use cell phones. (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [asterisk.org] 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.
Re:Easy does it. (Score:2)
A source for info (Score:3, Informative)
You might talk to the folks at NextBus [nextbus.com] who offer that sort of info for San Francisco's Municipal Railway [sfmuni.com]. (You can check my stop [nextbus.com] 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.
duluth mn reprasent (Score:2)
but to see what a commercial solution is like, check out the "web watch" on MY busline. [duluthtransit.com]
The more I read it... (Score:2)
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.
Electr
The University of Washington has some software... (Score:2)
Here's [PDF file] [gpsworld.com] a good article about the technology.
Siemens TransitMaster (Score:2)
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 u
I've got a solution for you (Score:2)
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 i
here is a solution, but ... (Score:2)
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.
Re:here is a solution, but ... (Score:2)
ODOT in Oregon does something like this (Score:2)
APRS (Score:1)
if this is a serious question... (Score:2)
as i live in north co. galway, i'd be eager to see you succeed.
Use SMS a bit more (Score:2)