Analysis of public transport systems and possible solutions to improve their use
Public transport systems, especially buses, are very rarely used by occasional travellers and are used almost exclusively by commuters going to work or school. Trains offer a better service in this regard because, as the sole national operator, their ability to invest in infrastructure and create something more user-friendly for travellers has allowed for wider use. However, focusing on buses, the critical issues regarding their use by occasional travellers remain. are as follows:
- Travelers don't know where the shelters are, and if they know where they are, they don't know where the buses that stop there take them.
- Travelers have no information on the various routes available in the area they are in, indexed by bus code or shelter.
- Travelers have no way of knowing which bus line to take based on their final destination.
- Travelers don't know how long it will take for the bus to arrive. the next bus from the bus shelter they need to use.
- Travelers have no way to conveniently and easily purchase tickets for the bus they want to use.
- Travelers have no way to reserve a seat on the bus, or to find out if there are still seats available or if they will have to stand in the waiting area (sometimes this happens on some student buses), or if seats are sold out.
- Elderly people who don't know how to use a smartphone have no way to access call centers that can inform them about the status of the upcoming bus or get information about the buses.
- The instructions on the bus shelters are in Italian, and the information is more difficult or almost impossible to access for those who don't understand Italian well.
To overcome these problems, it would be necessary to create a centralized system with a database and API, a web app, a smartphone app for travelers and one for drivers, and a call center for people without smartphones. The system should store data for all bus routes, allow searches by bus line code, display bus shelters in a given area, allow passengers to inspect the routes served by a specific bus shelter, and recommend the route to use based on their final destination. A traveler app should provide information on upcoming buses, either by scanning a bus shelter's QR code or directly via geolocation, including information on wait times for various bus lines. The app should also allow convenient purchases. I'm also considering a credit system that could somehow be linked to a bank account like PayPal, or allow payment by swiping a credit card, as if the phone were a POS terminal. The driver's app could be used to report any problems, receive information on stops booked by passengers who need to get on or off, and report the bus's location to the system so that all calculations regarding bus wait times can be made.
Naturally, a system like this could also be connected to railway or subway lines, in dedicated sections, if the architecture is designed correctly. It would be nice to have a single application that could be used for public transport in any province, or even any European country. It's a matter of maintaining open-source specifications regarding the format of the data to be integrated, providing administration panels that allow various operators to upload the data required for operation, or even providing integration via API.
Written by : Marco Bagnaresi
Email : contact@mbcraft.it