A new app for the commuters to keep track of MTC buses
Posted on: 29/Sep/2018 9:36:49 AM
Getting information about the arrival of MTC buses has been an issue for the commuters in Chennai. Now these commuters in Chennai city would be delighted. It is now revealed that soon in the year 2019 commuters would get an app and by this app the commuters would be able to track the MTC buses.
The service provider would be identified in the month of October by the government and an agreement would be signed to launch a mobile application and bilingual website. For the sake of this project, Institute of Road Transport or IRT has floated a tender worth of Rs 20 crores. The superb piece of information is the upcoming tracking system is the first for the government run companies and it would be rolled out inside 90 days of a deal being signed by MTC in Chennai. For other state transport corporations, a period of 11 months would be taken to roll out the tracking system.
The commuters in Chennai take to other modes of transport to reach their places of destination as they were not able to get information about the arrival of buses.
The transport secretary, Mr. Davidar spoke about how the ridership would be improved soon due to this new app. One important point is at present 1.8 crore commuters use the 8 state transport corporations every day and these corporations have combined fleet of nearly 22000 buses.
The presence of single touch SOS/ panic button in this new app would be tremendous. When this button is activated then it would send the current location of the phone to select contacts. Location tracking is facilitated. The routes of the buses, bus stops and position of the buses in real time would be displayed by the app and website. The arrival time of next 2 buses at all the stops along the route would be displayed by the app and website. Not only that the fastest as well as cheapest routes for the entered journey would also be displayed. The concerned depot would send a notification when the bus is reassigned a different route.
Presently the passengers do not have the exact information about the movement of the buses and there are more than 1 lakh bus stops in TN. Tracking devices/ GPS would be installed in the buses as per the new tracking system. Mr. Davidar finally spoke about how each bus stop in TN has been geo-coded and a unique identity given with in-house expertise by the transport corporations.
