Software for the Control and Analysis of Public TransportSystems

Public transport systems play an important role in providing mobility, combating traffic congestion, reducing carbon emissions, and improving economics. However, until recently, public transport systems have not exploited the full potential of information technology to improve their services and keep passengers informed of current service information. In order to convince people to leave their car at home and use public transport systems, a number of ways has been suggested, including reducing fares, introducing quality bus corridors and improving the public transport services reliability. However, the most effective strategy to achieve this is by improvements through the dissemination of up-to-date pertinent information and the reduction of perceived unreliability. The research described in this thesis presents a methodology for developing a cost-effective public transport software system which can improve transit services and provide potential passengers with real-time transit information in an easy to understand and accessible way. The system also provides the transit operator with tools for monitoring, analysing and measuring their service. In order to reduce the cost of the communications and tracking infrastructure, the system uses a vehicle location system based on GPS/GPRS positioning technology that significantly reduces the cost of implementing real-time public transport tracking. A number of features, including tools in the area of transit data visualisation, bus arrival time estimation, Quality of Service index calculation, delivering transit data on mobile devices and real-time navigation using the transport system are implemented. A test system was evaluated on a working bus route in a large town. The system demonstrates that sophisticated analysis and monitoring tools can be implemented cost-effectively. It is intended that by providing real-time passenger information, vehicle and route monitoring for transit operators and offline analysis and measurement of transport system performance the public transport system will have a resurge of use. It would also reduce route congestion, fuel consumption and carbon emissions.