The BEST undertaking is making an addition to its ambitious plan of utilising the global positioning system (GPS) to track its buses in real-time.
Rushing to the bus stop may soon be a thing of the past. The BEST undertaking is making an addition to its ambitious plan of utilising the global positioning system (GPS) to track its buses in real-time — letting commuters know through SMS the exact time it will take a bus to get to a point.
BEST general manager Om Prakash Gupta drew parallels of the feature with that of the passenger information system of the railways. “Just as one can know about train timings and services by sending an SMS to 139, bus commuters will also be able to similarly find out about services.”
The GPS project, initially planned to be completed in two phases, will now be covered in three. Under phase one, the broadcast equipment will be placed and activated inside a bus. The longitude and latitude measurements of a specific area — in this case, the BEST bus stop — will be stored inside a GPS antenna in the bus. When it approaches the bus stop, the antenna will pick up signals from satellites. And voila! Details of the next bus stop will be displayed on a screen in the bus. In the second phase, information about buses and bus stops will be stored in a central server at a BEST office. This will enable the sending of SMSes to commuters who pose queries on services in phase three.
Gupta said the first phase is likely to be finished by next June, and the next will take at least six months more than that. “The project requires substantial amounts of money — at least a few hundred crores of rupees for the successful implementation of all phases. Phases two and three, especially, will require a considerable sum. If some funding is received through one of the central schemes, it will be possible to finish phases two and three at the earliest. That’s why it is difficult to estimate the time-frame of the last phase.”
About 140 regular non-airconditioned buses underwent trials for the ambitious project early this year.
Officials from the BEST’s transport wing claimed that phase one is on track and trials with buses were conducted successfully.
“We were expecting that we will able to roll out phase one by December. However, the initial contractor faced a financial problem and backed out. The two contracts were subsequently clubbed and awarded to a single contractor. And things have started moving now,” he said.
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