Development of Bus Location System with Smartphone and Effect of Providing Regional Information added on Bus Information

In Japan, many local governments have recently introduced a “Community-bus” for purposes of ensuring mobility for residents, reducing the areas without public transportation services and so on. Although the bus-location system is demanded for raising the level of bus service, it is practically difficult for a local government to introduce the bus location system because of the expense to introduce and even operate the system continuously. We therefore develop a simple bus location system with a smartphone and construct a web page to provide regional information with real-time bus information. Then, we grasp the effects of providing the bus and regional information on passengers’ consciousness by a questionnaire. As a result, it is found that the regional information added on the bus information obviously effects the motivation of going out. Moreover, there is also possibility of providing regional information with real-time bus information to promote bus usage.