easyBus – Online GPS Based Bus Tracking & Management System

Abstract

The Public Bus Service in Sri Lanka has been cumbersome for the passengers due to practical problems such as the delay of busses and waste of time, inability to identify the exact point to get down from or get in to the bus, and the inability to decide the exact bus they need to get. The root cause of these problems in general, is the inability to track the buses matching their requirements in real-time to which presently no solution is provided. This project was carried out to introduce a Global Positioning System (GPS) based interfaces to track the busses matching the requirements of the passengers in real-time called ‘easyBus’, as a solution. The ‘easyBus’ system detects the bus halts around a bus in its route using the current latitudes and longitude of the bus provided by the Android smartphone of the bus driver, and sends the current location of the bus to the relevant bus halt, and also sends to the bus the halts currently around it, in the relevant route. In addition, the system facilitates two search options to search online the closest bus which goes to the intended destination and the time schedules of the expected busses. The suggested system was tested for the buses going in one direction in one route and it proved that it can be extended to multiple routes with both directions. This system reduces the time wastage of the passengers and increase their knowledge about the bus routes and the departure/arrival times of the buses.