Travel Light Connecting Destinations

Abstract

The majority of the local population use public transportation services for their transportation needs. Commuters face many difficulties in reaching their destination due to being misdirected, being unable to locate the nearest stop of a transportation service, lack of knowledge on transportation services to be taken, etc. This has given rise to the need of a navigational solution for the public transportation services. The proposed solution is aimed at demonstrating the basic needs of a navigational system, to be used on general transportation services. Travel Light provides information on public transportation services. The system provides flexibility of choosing among available transportation services and proper directions or information on the transportation service sequence to be followed to reach the destination. The application caters to the specific problem of a user not knowing the nearest service stop from his present location. While providing guidance to the general public, user feedback is to be used for the growth of Travel Light, for discovering new service stops as well as record duration to travel between locations from a specific service. The solution consists of an internal database with travel information. An implementation of A-Star algorithm is used to search for inter connected service points via a RESTFul web service which caters information to the client application, built on Android platform. The proposed solution considers the possibility of combining multiple transportation modes to provide flexibility to commuters. The interactivity of the application is increased with the use of Google Maps as well as traveling options which are categorized into shortest time, distance and comfort. Evaluation of the system has been done along the bus and train routes from Fort to Rajagiriya since it covers the complete test scenario. The test results provide conformance to successfully meeting the listed objectives by the proposed solution, Travel Light.