A Crowd-Sourcing Backend System for Bus Arrival Estimation

Abstract

Buses is one of the important transportations that serve the people in Hong Kong, many people rely on this for traveling, going to work and other purposes. However, the actual service schedule and the expected schedule provided by the bus companies are always inconsistent. The citizens sometimes need to wait for a long time at the bus stops. Therefore, it is quite difficult for the passengers to estimate the arrival time of the next coming bus. Nowadays, there is no any completed bus route tracking system or application for the passengers to use in Hong Kong. The bus companies are not willing to equip their buses with GPS devices to disclose the locations of the buses, because of the consideration for the operating costs and company image. Since, smart-phones such as iPhones and Android mobile devices become more popular in Hong Kong. Almost everyone is carrying at least one of them in hand on the street. In addition, GPS technology is also widely be embedded on the smart phone and the growth is quite mature now. Therefore, we decided to develop a bus routes tracking system that utilizes the public network by making use of different social network platform.