Public transit schedule and route planner application for mobile devices

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a public transit schedule and route planner application for urban public transportation. The application was developed for the Android Operating System. It works offline and does not need a permanent internet connection.While transport agencies usually make their schedules available online, browsing them outdoors is not always possible, or requires too much effort on the small screen of a mobile phone. The solutions of this problem are the GTFS databases, which describe the urban public transportation systems. Developers can create applications which use the GTFS databases. However, these databases are not applicable for fast processing needed for route planning on mobile devices with limited resources. Therefore we created a data structure from the GTFS database which is easier to manage, smaller and faster to process. The Android application uses this data structure.The application lists the departure times, journey times and the stops of the lines. It can display the lines on the map. It also shows the stops nearby with the name of the lines passing through. The user can choose one or more stops and view details about the lines passing through.The main function of the application is the route planner. It plans at least one route from a starting-point to a destination. Before the route planning the user can set parameters which are taken into account by the route planner.

LocateMyBus: IoT-Driven Smart Bus Transit

“…GTFS "feeds" let transit agencies publish their transit data and developers write applications that use that data in an inter-operable way. The iBart application [8] is one such application that provides scheduled arrivals, service advisories and a trip planner using GTFS. Other such apps exist for transit systems in Boston, Chicago, and London.…”

Planificador de viajes de transporte público utilizando el estándar GTFS

“…Está pensado para que funcione como una especie de taxi colectivo donde prioriza la comodidad del usuario al optimizar una ruta a través de predicciones de rutas. Se han realizado aplicaciones de planificación de rutas de transporte público para dispositivos móviles [17], donde menciona la importancia de tener acceso a la información cuando realizas un viaje o durante el mismo. Tiene como objetivo ser consultado de una manera práctica a través de una aplicación móvil la cual consume datos GTFS que le permite funcionar sin una conexión a internet.…”