A Sign of the Times

Remember your days as a student, getting doused with spring rains or shivering in the winter snow while wondering when the next campus bus would arrive? That’s all changed, with a little help from engineering faculty members Rabi Mishalani and Mark McCord.

“I’m really excited about this project,” says Sarah Blouch, director of Ohio State’s Transportation and Parking Services. “This is a great service to be able to offer the community.”The new Transportation Route Information Program, more commonly called TRIP, was installed in all of Ohio State’s 27 fixed-route buses. Electronic message boards were installed in 11 of the most-used stops with shelters so riders can see when the next bus is arriving in real-time. Four additional boards are on order.

According to Christopher Kovitya, administrative associate at CABS, Campus Area Bus Service, the newly installed system uses GPS and a variety of other sensors to pinpoint the locations of the buses and updates to the information conveyed through TRIP. This information includes online live maps of where the buses are and predicted arrival times at all bus stops. In addition, automatic voice announcements are made on the buses regarding the upcoming stop.

The bus tracking idea isn’t new for the College of Engineering.

“Way back, over 10 years ago, I had a student who was interested in getting passengers more information about the buses,” says McCord, professor of civil engineering. “Transportation and Parking wanted to do something, so I suggested they get a GPS system installed on the buses. We basically ended up building a homemade system with professor Umit Ozguner and research scientist Keith Redmill of electrical and computer engineering that could display bus locations and predicted bus arrival times on the Web.”

That system degraded over time and eventually was replaced with TRIP. The new system, which also includes sensors that count the number of passenger getting on and off the buses, provides a wealth of opportunities to faculty and students interested in public transportation service planning, design and operations, says Mishalani, associate professor of civil engineering.

“We’re involved from both a research and an educational perspective,” he says. “This new system is basically providing us with this living lab, the Campus Transit Lab, that is allowing us to study and experiment with the public transportation system.”

 The new commercial-quality system, by contractor Clever Devices, also includes the electronic message boards that display the current time and predicted bus arrival times on all routes servicing the stop. The arrival times update continually, and these signs also display information pertaining to unplanned service disruptions, for example due to construction in the vicinity of particular bus stops.

 A live map of CABS routes and bus locations along with predictions of bus arrival times at stops are available online at www.trip.osu.edu. This information is available in graphic version on “smart” cellular phones, including iPhones and Blackberry versions 4.1 or higher, that have full Internet browser access capabilities necessary to run TRIP, and in text version for other cellular phones.

In addition, a computer science and engineering student, Patrick Shuff, created another Web site to track the buses: www.osucabs.com.

Rachel Lichtenfeld is a former student communications assistant for the College of Engineering.

Contact:

Mark McCord, (614) 292-2388, mccord.2@osu.edu

Rabi Mishalani, (614) 292-5949, mishalani.1@osu.edu

On the Web: Read more and see how TRIP works online at tp.osu.edu/cabs/trip.shtml.