Public Transport Planning Assist

Inspiration

Transport is a very important function in our lives, and most of us use public transport. It's central to everything we do. Without transportation, it would be difficult if not impossible to get to our destination. Our transportation system is not ideal, it could be better.

Efficient transport has a significant impact on the liveability of our city, and that's why we're working on this for the hackathon. So we asked the question: "How might we improve the experience for people using public transport?"

Currently we work around the system. In the future, our liveable cities will anticipate and work around our needs.

What it does

1. Monitors movements - if you're stationery or moving.
2. Monitors surroundings - traffic, your location, accidents on roads, parking availability.
3. Remembers your patterns - your wake-up time, what time you usually catch the transport.
4. Detects real-time data of trains, buses and ferries if they're running late.
5. Monitors capacity and if the bus will drive past or not - offers alternative travel options for users including bus no, location of bus, etc.
6. Provides alternative and cost-effective transportation when user is late boarding or when bus/late/ferry is delayed, including TAXIs and UBER and other future transportation entities.

How we built it

The data already exist (open data). The tools already exist (eg. Trip View, Google Maps). The app will connect and integrate with the features that are in Trip View and Google Maps. We're considering applets such as IFTTT to help utilise tools that already exist, and make a personalised app which caters to the needs of the individual.

Challenges we ran into

Yesterday we hit a road block. At 4:30pm we went to Central station bus stop to test our initial concept to generate more awareness of bus timetables and routes. Our hypothesis holds, however we discovered that a lot of this information already exists in tools such as Trip View and Google Maps. We were disheartened and we returned to UTS to revaluate and think of how we could solve another big problem we faced with public transport. We even looked at the other problems and considered working on something new.

By 7pm, we came to a decision: Do we want to give up now and come in tomorrow as observers to others? Or do we want to work with what we have and take it through the full process of this Hackathon? We have learnt so much, why don't we just have fun with it?

So we kept going back to our problem statement. The answer is really in the question.

We asked the question, if these tools already exist, why are the problems still there? What we found is that although the tools are there, people are not aware of these tools or even how to use them. So the problem is really about how to make these accessible and personal for people.

The existing Google Maps and Trip View need the user to learn how to navigate around the app. The app we're proposing would take this one step further. Our app would be automatic, personalised, and notify the individual of their trips and alert them of when to leave, alternate routes, and make their overall public transport experience a more enjoyable and stress-free.

We arrived to this at 8pm last night.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to bounce back from our roadblocks. We had a different initial proposal, but we had to pivot. We maintained our optimism, resilience and sense of humour as a team, and we worked well to come up with a related idea and new solutions using the fail-fast approach.

What we learned

We learnt that failure can bring new opportunities; that research and collaboration takes time and persistence. Hitting road blocks are part of the experience, and it's how you deal with challenges to identify opportunities that matter.

What's next for Stress-free A2B

Test the concept with developers and with everyday customers of public transport. We need to see if this will help more people use public transport and if it makes it more attractive and accessible to people who otherwise would not use it.

Built With

• app
• geo-fencing
• geo-location
• web