Dynamic Web-Based En-Route Timetable Generator

Title: Dynamic Web-Based En-Route Timetable Generator

Abstract

Transit agencies should be able to plan well in advance to develop accurate customer schedules. But Most transit agencies are always faced with uncertainties while planning for their customer travel schedule due to certain conditions such as unfavourable weather patterns, long lead times, the occurrence of special events on a customer route, impromptu en-route service for instance repairing of roads or electricity. This project is going to develop a tool that will allow these transit agencies to provide its customers with timely and accurate schedules information on a website. This project will be base on an open source platform[1,p2]

Background and significance

Transit agencies are always searching for more efficient automation of route timetable information that will always accommodate route changes in case there are uncertainties that can occur along the way. Most of the current tools used for generating route timetable doesn’t provide the customers or the driver with real dynamic information on the transit schedules that cater to any uncertainty along the way. The public when not informed early enough on the changes in timetable schedules they label the transit agency as inefficient, unreliable, and inconvenient [3]. The problem even gets worst for regional agencies that offer timetable schedules. They are responsible for managing a broad range of route timetable schedules, most of the time they are faced with delays in keeping the customers updated on any changes that might occur on the scheduled timetable without taking into account these uncertainties they are bound to inconvenient travelling passengers.

The objective of the dynamic route timetable generator is to develop software or rather a tool that will enable transit agencies that are offering transportation services whether using a bus, car taxi or train to dynamically and automatically generates route timetables information for customers to access it on the website [4].  With the emergence of new technologies such as internet-enabled mobile phones and websites dissemination of information is instant therefore these tools are going to take advantage of these technologies to create a dynamic schedule timetable that will enable the transit agencies to relay schedule data route information accurately and in a timely manner.

This project is going to develop a tool that will dynamically load route schedule timetable tool to a website that can be easily accessed by passengers in a variety of ways [5].  It can be accessed through the website on the internet or through an internet enabled mobile phone. Moreover, the tool will use a variety of languages this will cater to all passengers who speak with different languages.

Methodology

The project will be carried out in three phases

• Requirements of the project
• Proof of concept
• Production

Requirements of the project

This phase consists of working out with the transit agencies to understand how they conduct their business, their business requirements as well as the technical requirements. the project team in this phase identifies all the information required for route schedule and web usability requirements as well as the technical requirements. The system engineering approach will be adopted to develop the concept of the operation, detailed requirements as well as to design the documentation. Industry review as well as interviews will be conducted to identify the set of requirements for developing these tools. The project team will review the software by the transit agencies so as to develop a schema that will meet the user interface design of the tool.

Proof of concept

The tool is going to be developed and the tool will be deployed on an active website as a test of the concept under development. The project team will employ the use case approach to come up with the requirements.  The proof of concept with detail how the tool works from the user perspective, business logic, and error processing.The proof of concept will read schedule route data set from different travel agencies and the information will be compiled with any uncertainty that may occur en route to give out dynamic accurate information to the user. This stage is going to test the usability of the tool. The primary accomplishment of this phase is to deploy the tool of an active website so that it can be tested with the users. In this stage, the project team will test whether the user can view all the schedule timetable information at once, the ability for the user to check the date for accuracy and whether the tool as the ability to dynamically update the schedules for the end-user [6].

Production

This phase consists of developing the tool “dynamic web-based route timetable generator “that will be freely be distributed as open-source software and can be easily modified by the transit agencies [2]. The goal in this phase is to produce a tool that can be easily modified and customized according to the needs of the different transit agencies. The primary accomplishment for the phase is to provide technical assistance for the transit agencies on the design of the tool and if there is any modification that can be made. also, documentation of the project will be availed to the user. The license will be sought to allow free distribution.  Evaluation and follow up will be made in this stage to test if the tool meets its expectations.

Statement of qualifications

The project developer is a software engineer who has 3 years of experience in developing and managing navigation and transportation systems using the standard GPS, IT communication systems as well as geographic information systems (GIS). For over 2 years the lead developer has been involved in defining GIS standards, especially for transit agencies. The developer has successfully developed and deployed mapping software as well as automatic vehicle location tracking systems using the TCIP to a number of transportation agencies.

Expected outcomes

The tool will demonstrate the benefits of using the dynamic en route timetable generator. This tool is going to assists the transit agencies with a rapid and accurate timetable data that will cater for all the uncertainty along the way thus offering alternative route. This will ensure users get a reliable and convenient travelling experience devoid of any uncertainty. Moreover, the tool will ensure that transit agencies can easily modify and customize it since it is based on an open software platform.

Bibliography

[1]Perens, Bruce. “The Emerging Economic Paradigm of OpenSource.”http : //perens. com/ArticlesÆconomic.html. February 16,2002, p2.

[2] Blankenhom, Dana. “I don’t want you to talk, Mr. Gates.” General Development,

http ://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/, Posted 10 :27 am, 3 May 200 5 .

[3] International Congress Innovation and Technology XXI: Strategies and Policies Towards the XXI [4] Century, & Soares, O. D. D. (1997). Innovation and technology: Strategies and policies. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

[4] Emerging Technologies: From Hindsight to Foresight. Edited by Edna F. Einsiedel. UBC Press.

[5] Giersch, H. (1982). Emerging technologies: Consequences for economic growth, structural change, and employment : symposium 1981. Tübingen: Mohr.

[6] Kendall, K. E. (1999). Emerging information technologies: Improving decisions, cooperation, and infrastructure. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.