Designing an Online Bus Route Planning System for the City of Edinburgh using Google Maps and Open Source Applications

The increasing use of web based GIS and Transport GIS systems has facilitated a rise in transport services being provided online to the public. With the emergence of more and more open source software and applications, these services can be provided to the public at much lower costs and with increased interoperability between services. The purpose of this project was to develop and design a bus route planner for Edinburgh City, utilizing open source software and Google Maps. The current bus route planning systems available, for Edinburgh, were critically analyzed. It was decided that current online bus resources in Edinburgh are below the standard of what a bus route planner could provide. Data received from Traveline was used to create a bus routing and a timetable based routing solution was designed. Through the use of this bus network a series of routing criteria was developed to select the “best” route solution. Criteria such as, the number of connections needed and the time of the journey were used in this solution. A user interface was built in the form of a web page. Users can enter their origin location and the destination they wish to travel to, as well as the time of the day they wish to travel. Output in the form bus stop and whole route maps were produced using Google Maps, along with the necessary route details. User evaluations were carried out in the form of a user survey and interview of professionals in the field of Planning, Transport Planning and GIS. This project succeeded in its aim of designing a routing system available online with positive comments from each evaluation. However, recommendations were made for further user analysis and for an improved user interface to be built