Bus Route Advisory Algorithms

and Services

Akshaya Srivatsa
Department of Telecommunication Engineering
PESIT
akshay.s86@gmail.com

10/18/08 1
Agenda
 Case Study-BMTC
 Problem Statement
 Solution Objectives
 System Architecture
 The Algorithm
 The Services
 Strengths And Limitations
 Next Steps
 Acknowledgement
10/18/08 2
Case Study-BMTC
 Bangalore city has
 Over 1700 bus routes
 Over 1100 bus stops
 16 trunk routes and 14
more to be added
 Currently, highly
disoriented bus routes

BMTC- Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation

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Problem Statement

Current Scenario
 Large number of bus stops and
bus routes
 Difficulty in identifying good
routes
 Public’s ignorance about the
entire bus route system
 The bus stops are not equipped
with dynamic display boards
 Long waiting time in bus stops
due to lack of information on
timing

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Solution Objectives

 To design a software, that

 suggest routes between any two stops, after optimizing on

time and distance

 is accessible through
 Internet – users can browse from their desktops
 Mobile phone - low priced Short Message Service [SMS], enables
this service to be made available on mobile phones

10/18/08 5
Solution Objectives -
Continued
 Is highly user friendly and intuitive
 The users need to provide,
 Starting bus stop name.
 Ending bus stop name.

 Is capable of generating
 Direct bus routes
 One interchange bus routes
 Grid bus routes -The future of bus services
 Trunk Routes
 Feeder Routes

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System Architecture

Commute
rs Tomcat,
Internet 2 Optimized bus
routes MySQL,
Windows 2000

1 Get bus route

2 Optimized bus routes

SMS

1 Get bus route SMS

NOW SMS/MMS gateway

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A Prototype Implementation
 A prototype software has been developed with both the internet and mobile
phone access to get the bus route information

 The software is developed using Java

 A web application is based on Java server pages (JSP) and is deployed on

Tomcat – J2EE servlet container

 The backend database used for storing the bus route information is MySQL

 An SMS implementation has also been developed using Now SMS/MMS

gateway trial edition and Sony Ericsson mobile phone as the GSM modem

 Metaphone and Soundex algorithms for spell check have been used.

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The Algorithms

Requirements
 The following parameters are essential for the algorithm
 Bus route length
 Total time of journey
 Timings of departure from the bus stations
 Stops the route visits
 Interchange points
 In the case study of BMTC, we screen scraped some
sample bus routes and built the database.

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The Algorithms- Continued
Direct Bus Routes
• These routes are the simplest to find.
• Direct bus routes need not always provide time or money optimization.
So routes which do not provide any of the optimizations need to be
“Filtered” out.

Algorithm

• Identify all routes that contain the starting bus stops name and ending bus
stops name
• Ensure that the bus routes do not exceed a “Threshold” distance/time
value

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The Algorithms-
Continued
One Interchange Routes

In terc h a n g e
S t a r in g S t o p E n d in g S t o p
P o in t

• Routes that need one change of bus.

• Interchange points-These are typically

stops where multiple routes intersect.

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The Algorithms- Continued
S ta r t

I d e n ti f y A l l T h e I n te r c h a n g e
P o in t s W i th i n T h e B o u n d in g
R e c ta n g le

C hoose A N ew
I n te r c h a n g e P o in t

 Algorithm A r e Th e re
B u se s F r o m
NO

A t o I j?

YES

 The bounding rectangle A r e T h er e NO

B u se s F r o m

The interchange points


 The estimation metric
 Identifying routes with best
Ij T o B ?
YES
C a lc u la t e T h e M e t r ic F o r " A t o
I j" a n d F o r " I j T o B " . A d d B o t h
T h e M e tr ic s a n d N a m e I t A s
" M e t r i c j" .

metric NO H a ve A ll
T he IjB e e n
 Final constraints on the E x h au ste d ?

routes YES
A rran g e T h e In te rch a n g e
P o in ts I n D e cre a sin g
O rd e r O f M etr ic

D is p l a y T h e T o p
3 R e s u ls

S to p

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Strength of the solution

 Solves route identification issues faced by people who use the

metropolitan bus service. Very few cities offer this service across the
world.
 Computationally simple
 The entire control lies in the estimation metric.
 Designed for Grid based services - The future of metropolitan bus
services
 A generic algorithm – can be used with vehicles equipped with GPS
systems, taxi routing etc

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Limitations of the solution

 Scalability – Cannot be scaled for ‘n’ interchange situations

where n >= 2
 Averaged out data – Not a good approach in solving a real
world problem
 Soundex and Metaphone – Not the best spell check
algorithms

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Results
 The algorithm is able to generate a fairly accurate bus routes.
 There is a good match between the routes suggested by the
algorithm and routes actually taken by experienced bus
commuters.
 Results obtained are better than the ones suggested by the
BMTC site.
 Sometimes, the algorithm does not provide any “One
interchange routes” if the existing bus system is not well
designed.

 Sample Result
----Will add my programs output here---

10/18/08 15
Next Steps
 Use of real time data, such as traffic congestion, time of arrival
of the buses, in the algorithm
 Using the algorithm along with GPS services
 Redesigning and testing the algorithm for grid based services
 Making use of location services (Example-BMTC Yeliddiri
service)
 Using maps for displaying results

10/18/08 16
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the following people who have guided
me through this work

 Dr.Bhanubhaskar and Dr. H N Shankar, Professors, PESIT

 Mr. Bhosekar, Former Divisional Controller of BMTC
 Mr. Srivatsa Krishnaswamy, Director of technology and innovation,
Perot Systems, Mr. Venkat Varadhan and Mrs. Lakshmi Kutty, senior
architects, Hewlett Packard
 Mr.Anush Shetty, 8th semester Computer Science, PESIT

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