SMART CITIES - BRTS (Bus Rapid Transport System)
Use of RFID in information dissemination as to the destination of BRTS bus in India
In the overall realization of Smart City concept, the Urban bodies/ Corporations, have to think of improving the quality of its public transport services. Hence, in order to lessen the waiting time of the passengers of BRTS (Bus Rapid Transit System) at the bus-stand, an RFID based solution has been thought of. This App will inform the passengers as to how far away a particular BRTS bus is from a specific station at a specific time. The user will feed only codes or name of bus number, destination station and the direction (up or down). There are three solutions for data-capturing:
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Make use of GPS and Google Maps Technology, or
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The conductor of the bus will send at each station an SMS with information in codes. System will continue to update the status, or
Every bus will be fitted with an RFID tag, which, with the passage of bus from every bus stand, will broadcast the status of bus and which shall be captured by an antenna fitted at every BRTS bus stand.​
The focus is on the THIRD (RFID based) option.
The peculiarity of the idea is in being unique in Indian context. Probably no city or not state roadways corporation in India till date has come up with an RFID based solution. A solution, which is not only highly cost-effective, infallible (in terms of multiple solutions it provides) and sustainable, but is instrumental also in exploring more and more of ESDM industry of India (http://itisrfid.wix.com/solutions#!Why-do-we-Indians-need-our-Electronic-Product-Industry/uls6y/56a99ec90cf215a9bb9f38e9).
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Service Model
Service Level Objective
To provide a commuter of BRTS (Bus Rapid Transport System) the service of information of the real-time location of the bus he wishes.
Problem Statement
A commuter of BRTS may have to wait long for this desired bus, more so, when his bus left the bus stand just before he had reached. Or instead of waiting at the bus stand, he could have waited at home, had he had some mobile app or some other means of giving him the real location of his bus at the real time.
Solution and Methodology
Business Model
The solution has a business/ revenue model too. A reasonable cost to every retrieval of information by commuters/ users can be fixed (will vary from city to city) which shall be paid by the concerned urban Corporation/ urban body, which in turn shall be recouped by them by enhancing the cost of bus ticket only a little, or by charging a cess on very small rate on property tax. In order to build the standards of revenue generation, and looking at the large number of customers, the implementation should start from Delhi in phase-wise or route-wise manner.
Every bus will be fitted with a suitable RFID tag. And every BRTS bus stand shall be fitted with compatible antenna. The RFID tag, with the passage of bus from every bus stand, will broadcast the status of bus and which shall be captured by an antenna fitted at every BRTS bus stand. The servers shall be updated in real time through a web-enabled system, and the common citizen will be able to enjoy the service of information of movement of any bus. It will provide the information like the Indian Railway's National Train Enquiry System does.
Expansion of Application
Further, such servers through a compatible platform would be able to talk to any system designed for monitoring of many behavioral patterns of services of urban Corporations in Smart City, setting an instance of use of Internet of Things. Further, every bus and bus-stand under BRTS will have an electronic ID, and a good database allowing management of fleet of buses and further of citizen awareness through mobile sms in case of any traffic congestion or cancellation of buses on certain route. This might facilitate in some way or other the management of implementation of JNNURM. Since, it provides all information to the user on his mobile as to the route of each and every bus on BRTS of not only his city but of all cities of India wherever my system is working; the addressable size of target market is beyond expectation. On account of the fact that people don't like to waste their precious time in waiting for the bus, the growth prospects are exponentially huge coupled with high possibility of jobs creation in every BRTS city in India. Further, on the line of ''MakeInIndia" concept, this should provide a huge opportunity for Indian ESDM industry to expand and thus contribute towards reducing the India's trade deficit on one hand, and making India a big economy by 2020 on the other.