The daily bus journey for the Delhi public transport users would be easier than earlier as the Delhi Transport Department launched a platform — Open Transit Data (OTD) on Friday which will provide the GPS feeds of bus locations in every 10 seconds.
In a first of its kind, the transport department in association with Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology-Delhi (IIIT) has developed this platform which will be helpful for both officials and the public to tract information related to buses such as geo-coordinates of all bus stops, route maps, timetables as well as the real time GPS feeds of bus locations every 10 seconds.
“It is a major step to promote collaboration and co-creation of innovative and inclusive transport solutions for the people of Delhi. This platform will provide free of cost static and real time datasets of Delhi’s buses for app developers and researchers in machine-readable format,” said Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot.
Gahlot added, “This initiative will provide a lot of useful information at the finger tips of citizens and encourage more and more people to switch to public transport, thereby impacting pollution.”
The OTD portal was created by IIIT Delhi with
the help of Delhi Integrated Multi-model Transit System (DIMTS) and Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) that run the city bus services.
As per the officials, the real-time data will be provided for the cluster buses. “The real time data for around 1700 buses operated under Cluster scheme will be provided and the data of DTC and DMRC metro feeder buses is also expected to be added shortly,” added the official.
The officials further added that all these datasets are being provided in a machine-readable and globally-accepted transit data standard called the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS). This will enable hundreds of app-builders to provide transit related services like Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) at any bus stop, position of the vehicle, alert and diversion messages etc.
The data of graminsewa, metro trains will also be provided in the future to facilitate the commuters. The portal will also enable the government in installing real-time Passenger Information Systems (PIS) or display boards at bus stops and terminals to let bus commuters know of arrival time of various buses.
As per the data shared by the OTD portal, there are around 3464 bus stops situated at various locations of the National Capital. Currently there around 3880 public transport buses run in the city ply on around 543 routes, out of which 1700 buses comes are clustered buses owned by the DIMTS. The Portal further showed that the cluster buses complete around 16562 trips per day.