Information the cleanest option of all: how information technology can improve public transport

As experts in transport, fuels, and air quality continue their fight over the choice of a clean fuel for Delhi?s public transport, cheered by the press and television, the fate of Delhi?s commuting millions ? who make about 6.5 millions trips a day ? hangs in balance: will I make it to work in time on 1 October? Will my child reach school safely? How do I take my ailing father to the hospital in an overcrowded bus? Such questions are uppermost in the minds of the masses. Perhaps, things would have turned out different had the experts been regular users of public transport themselves. As different authorities lock horns over these issues, let us look at measures that have been ignored so far, solutions that are equally relevant but cheaper and quicker to implement and more cost-effective, solutions that require not so much money as willingness on part of the authorities and cooperation on part of the citizenry. Information is the most neglected aspect of public transport management. This article describes some of the innovations and good practices in use, identifies the three stages at which users need information, and indicates some ways of providing that information. Harnessing information technology to make public transport more attractive Imagine the convenience of getting a call each day at work at about closing time to tell you that your usual bus will be arriving at your usual bus stop in, say, ten minutes. In Helsinki, for some routes, such service is available through mobile phones. BusCall, in the United States, is a ?service that alerts families when their child?s bus is approaching the bus stop. BusCall tracks the schoolbus and notifies families using telephone or the Internet. . . . Parents and children can view an online, real-time map of their neighborhood with the child?s bus moving along its route.? Superoute 66, a bus service in the UK, was a part of a demonstration project to ?encourage commuters using the congested Woodbridge Road corridor away from their cars. This it achieved, as within the corridor the number of passengers using the service increased by 8000?estimated to remove between 3300 and 5000 car movements a week.? During the duration of the project, it was possible to track the progress of a service operating on the route minute by minute. Countdown bus stops in London display the expected arrival times, of all the buses calling at a given bus stop. Metro Rapid buses in Los Angeles use IT (information technology) to gain priority: each bus is equipped with a transponder, which can turn a red signal green up to 10 seconds earlier and extend a green signal up to 10 seconds longer. A park-and-ride scheme in Reading in the UK connects a parking lot near the city centre to the railway station. There is only one traffic light along the route, and the shuttle buses are equipped with a device that automatically ensures a green light for the approaching bus. As these examples show, information technology has immense potential in making public transport more user friendly. Information for users of public transport: Information before setting out on the journey Timetables, maps, and lists of services are the most common forms of information on existing services. Whereas transport providers in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore publish maps, those in Delhi and Chennai do not. The Delhi Transport Corporation, in fact, has not revised its guide for more than a decade. A drawback with service-by-service lists is that they offer little guidance in identifying what bus to take to reach point A from point B. Therefore, it is essential to cross-index such lists to well-known locations: places of worship, railway stations, schools and colleges, markets, major hospitals, movie theatres, major post offices, etc. Ideally, each service should have a separate flyer which shows the actual route and fares. A comprehensive guide covering an entire city may appear to be a better solution, especially to those who provide the transport. For users, however, a series of area by area guides will be more useful. Resident welfare associations can also prepare such guides to routes that serve their residential colonies. TAGs, or transit access guides, approach the problem from a different angle; large establishments or office complexes are large-scale ?trip generators?: hundreds of work-related journeys originate and terminate at such points. These establishments may, as a social service, prepare brief guides to public transport services for visitors. Many public transport operators publish telephone numbers from which route information is available. Most often, these numbers are displayed on the insides of buses?a point at which the information is least likely to be used; printing the numbers on tickets or making them a part of the bus stop signage is more useful. In addition, most people use public transport because that is the only means of transport they can afford; few of them would have regular access to the telephone. Information at the boarding point The least that users can reasonably expect at a boarding point is its name. But even that at times is asking for too much, as is the case in Delhi where advertisements completely mask not only the names of bus stops but also the list of bus routes served by the bus stop. And even when the names are not covered, they are barely legible: the letters are not large enough and contrast poorly with the background colour. A code of practice produced by the Office of the Rail Regulator in Britain, titled Meeting the needs of disabled passengers, offers the following advice: ?As a general rule, letters and numbers should be of a height of at least 10 mm for every metre of viewing distance, with no lettering smaller than 22 mm in height.? The code also goes on to add: ?The high contrast combination of black letters on a yellow background is legible at three times the distance of a low contrast combination of green on red. Some partially sighted people, however, find white or pale colours on a dark background more legible.? Those bus stops that serve such places as railway stations and hospitals can even display appropriate icons to highlight that information for the benefit of those who cannot read or do not know the local script. It may also help to assign a unique number to each bus stop, preferably based on a system that indicates the location of the stop and, say, its distance from the city centre. Good passenger information systems, however, must go beyond mere identification and display at each boarding point, at the very least, the times of the first and the last two or three trips of the day for each of the route served by that point. London Transport ensures that each bus stop also displays not only a timetable but a strip map of each route. Many European cities now offer real time information system for bus passengers based on a combination of sensors embedded along roads, a device fitted to each bus, a centralized computer, and electronic displays at each bus stop. Some may argue that such systems are expensive and technologically sophisticated. Secondly, the displays are typically based on estimated speeds and cannot take into account unexpected delays owing to traffic jams and diversions. For a country rich in human resources, there are always other options?all you need is a network of transport staff or volunteers stationed at major bus stops and issued with pagers or, preferably, mobile phones and, perhaps, a loudspeaker. Misuse of the mobile phones need not be an issue either, because the members of the network can form a ?restricted users group?, which essentially restricts the calls to a set of defined users. Information on board Once passengers board a bus or a train, their information requirements become more specific, namely timely announcements of stops. In many European cities, this is done by means of electronic displays. In India, given our crowded trains and buses, the displays may not be visible to everybody, apart from the inevitable problem of the choice of script. Spoken announcements can solve both the problems. ?Live? announcements have the advantage in that they can include such items as diversion of routes, more popular destinations close to each stop, and estimated arrival times. The Americans with Disabilities Act states that ?vehicles in excess of 22 feet [6.7 metres] in length, used in multiple-stop fixed-route service, shall be equipped with a public address system permitting the driver to announce stops and provide other passenger info within the vehicle?. Drivers are better placed to make such announcements than conductors. Transit guides for cities Clear, up to date, and attractively produced guides can promote the use of public transport. Such guides should be prepared from the point of view of the user and not that of the service provider; a guide for Mumbai, for instance, should cover suburban rail services as well as the city?s extensive network of bus routes. A guide should enable its user to find out how to go from point A to point B by using all the available options, which include the so-called ?intermediate public transport? namely taxis and auto-rickshaws. A deterrent to such means of overcharging a passenger as taking a longer route or using rigged up meters is to publish certified fares between pairs of points within a city. Apart from such items of information as maps, timetables, and fare tables, the guide should indicate for each route its known peak and lean hours. This one item of information alone can potentially persuade some to switch to public transport. Who should finance such guides? Providing better information is one of the cheapest options to promote public transport, with all its attendant benefits such as reduced air pollution and lower consumption of fuels. With this argument, it should be easier to seek funding. Advertisements, sponsorships, and ?green? organizations are some possibilities. Shops, restaurants, and other commercial establishments served by particular routes may be willing to advertise in flyers devoted exclusively to those routes. A small percentage of revenue earned from parking fees, for instance, can be earmarked for transit guides. Tickets and ticketing Tickets can be a source of both information and money. Changing the design of tickets so that it gives such information as the route (service), time of issue, and fare and incorporates bar codes can generate valuable information (if tickets can be collected at the end of a trip); such information can be used for detecting and monitoring the patterns of travel. ?Smart? cards can make travel easier by eliminating repeated transactions (which invariably involve small change). Such cards are even more useful in monitoring travel patterns and enable quicker responses to changing demands. Tickets for travel on the suburban rail services in Mumbai are also sold in bulk as ?books? of 50 tickets, for instance; each ticket has to be validated before the journey at any of a number of machines provided for the purpose at the stations. This system is particularly convenient for those who travel frequently but not so often as to make buying a pass worthwhile. Conclusion The potential of information in promoting public transport continues to be ignored. Accessible and reliable information may persuade those who use personal transport, particularly two-wheelers, to switch to public transport. Flyovers cost millions and take years to complete; ?clean? fuels have their limitations; and traffic becomes increasingly sluggish as more and more personal vehicles clog the roads (because public transport is uncomfortable, unreliable, and slow) it is time we turn to information and prove to the world that India is a superpower in information technology not only abroad but also at home.