Participatory sensing based real-time public transport information service

Modern cities continuously struggle with infrastructural problems especially when the population is massively growing. One affected area is public transportation. In default of offering convenient and reliable service the passengers tend to consider other transport alternatives. However, even a relatively simple functional enhancement, such as providing real-time timetable information, requires considerable investment and effort following traditional means, e.g. deploying sensors and building a background communication and processing infrastructure. Using the power of crowd to gather the required data, share information and send feedback is a viable and cost effective alternative. In this demonstration, we present TrafficInfo, our prototype smart phone application to implement a participatory sensing based live public transport information service. TrafficInfo visualizes the actual position of public transport vehicles with live updates on a map, and gives support to crowd sourced data collection and passenger feedback.