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| Mark Hickman, of the Civil Engineering and Engineering
Mechanics Department, is developing software that will allow bus
riders to chart their route and to find out if their bus is on time
via computer. "Our goal is to get both travelers and bus companies
interested in new types of passenger information," Hickman
says. |
Software Aims to Make Bus Riding Easier in Tucson
Wednesday, 28 May 2003
Ed Stiles
Contact Information
Mark
Hickman
Assistant Professor
Civil Engineering
and
Engineering Mechanics
520-626-9420
mhickman@engr.arizona.edu |
Mark Hickman wants to make riding the bus easier in
Tucson.
Hickman, an assistant professor in UA civil engineering, is
developing software that allows bus riders to chart the best route
according to where they are, where they want to go and when they want to
travel.
Currently, riders can get this information by calling a
human operator at Tucson's bus company, Sun Tran. Hickman's package would
allow users to get the same information simply by clicking on a Sun Tran
map, answering a few questions and letting the computer's lightning-fast
brain come up with several route suggestions.
In addition, the
software will tap into Sun Tran's GPS system to tell you if the bus is on
time, ahead of schedule or running late.
All of this is not as easy
as it sounds, Hickman says.
When the user clicks on a map location
-- say their office building -- the computer draws a circle around that
spot with a quarter-mile radius. Then it identifies all the bus stops
within that zone. "We settled on a quarter mile because people seem
willing to walk that far," Hickman says. "That's a five-minute
walk."
Then the computer determines which routes serve these bus
stops and if any of them go to the destination. If not, the program has to
examine where these routes intersect others and find the best transfer
route.
After that, the program has to figure out which combination
of buses the rider should take to avoid long waits at transfer
stops.
All of this is tricky enough, but "the interesting wrinkle
I'm adding is a harder research problem -- not only giving you the
schedule information, but also some sense of how likely it is that the bus
will be there on time," Hickman says.
Sun Tran keeps track of its buses
with GPS units that transmit their location every 40
seconds.
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Sun Tran already keeps track of its buses more or less
continuously, Hickman notes. Each bus has a GPS unit that transmits its
location every 40 seconds. The software would consult this system and tell
you if you need to sprint for the stop or if you have time for another cup
of coffee.
"One of my overriding motivations is to make the
information a little more accessible," Hickman says. "The way we currently
make it accessible is for you to call and talk with an operator. And
that's probably the best way to do it for many people. What I'm going
after is an alternative that might meet other needs."
Prospective users might include
those who have trouble using a telephone or who want to make plans
when Sun Tran offices are closed.
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Prospective users might include those who have trouble
using a telephone or who want to make plans for the next day when the Sun
Tran offices are closed. Others might be tech-savvy people who could use
their PDAs to check into the system while out and about.
Two
graduate students are working on the project with Hickman: Chris Cherry, a
civil engineering master's student, and Anirudh Garg, a master's student
in computer science.
"I thought this would be easy," Cherry said.
"But then we got into it and found there are so many little, intricate
technicalities and little hurdles that you have to get through." He notes
that just using the paper route guide that Sun Tran and other bus
companies provide can be difficult, especially for those who has never
seen one before.
"We're developing this prototype software program
as a research effort," Hickman says. "The people at Sun Tran have been
very helpful in providing information, and we plan to show them our
software to see if they're interested in something like this. I'm not sure
what Sun Tran will do with it. It's possible they would use it, or it's
possible they could go with one of the existing commercial products. Our
goal is to get both travelers and bus companies interested in new types of
passenger information."
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