Last week, Chennai joined a list of over 440 cities across the world that have a public transport layer on top of Google Maps. Launched without any significant help from the city's public transport operators, the service, despite far from being perfect, offers a glimpse into the possibilities of a reliable public transit route planning system.
Currently, basic requirements such as route information, arrival/departure timings and route maps are not available. The city's public transport system is remarkably passenger-unfriendly, say experts. Even existing investments on GPS-enabled buses and Passenger Information System (PIS) display boards in bus stops remain largely unutilised.
Of the 2,000-odd bus stops covered by Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) bus services, only 60 have a display board which scrolls bus arrival information. The display boards hardly provide any useful information as only 550 of the 3,400 MTC buses are fitted with a GPS device. Passengers prefer to board the first available bus, instead of waiting for a GPS-enabled bus, whose arrival time is displayed on the digital board.
“No single bus route has 100 per cent GPS coverage. MTC decided to distribute such devices across depots and routes, and the display boards are now irrelevant,” says Daniel Robinson of Chennai City Connect, an NGO working on issues concerning traffic and transportation. Part of a team which is working on digitally mapping all MTC bus routes in the city, Mr.Robinson says that the fact that Google could offer a public transit layer largely using public domain data shows what the city's residents have been denied all this while.
Investments in fleet management and schedule management software, which would enable the Corporation to analyse real-time data instead of the six month gap which exists right now, makes strong business sense, he says. “For example, in some of the analysis that we did, between 11.30 a.m. and 2.30 p.m., the number of buses operating on peak frequency routes is the same as the morning rush hour. If routes are scientifically planned, these buses could easily be deployed on alternate routes.”
An additional benefit is that the data can be used to offer passenger information services and ensure greater transparency, Mr.Robinson adds. Arun Ganesh, a student at the National Institute of Design, who developed www.busroutes.in, says that the MTC must start with releasing whatever information it has in a usable format.
“Everyone should know when a bus will leave the depot, what will be the journey time and how many bus stops are present along a particular route. Only then can passengers judge how reliable the city's bus service is.” Taking the example of bus shelters to highlight the level of disregard for passengers, he says the space has been entirely taken up for advertisements. “The bus route numbers are put somewhere at the top in small font. Better information displays, aided with maps and locality-specific information, could easily be installed in each bus shelter.”
S.K. Lohia, Director (Urban Transport), Ministry of Urban Development, says that opening up transit data makes sense as “the reliability of public transport services must be quantifiable”. MTC managing director S.Boopathy said that route and time information is “not a secret” and the Corporation is considering how to publish the information online. “We are working on an SMS-based passenger information system through which route details and arrival/departure timings can be obtained. Besides, funding has been sought to install GPS units in all the 3,000 buses and the proposal is likely to be announced soon.”
