A Mobile Guidance Platform for Public Transportation

Abstract

This paper presents an approach which allows people with disabilities to use public transportation more effectively in supporting them throughout the whole journey. Besides the common feature set, like offering time table information and planning trips consisting of multiple rides it additionally includes information when to get on or off a vehicle and performs route re-planning in the case of unexpected events like delays. Moreover, it provides information particularly important for people with disabilities, like wheelchair users or blind persons. Depending on the user profile, information regarding the accessibility of vehicles and also routing information for footpaths are delivered in real-time, which is especially important at major transfer points like railway stations where routes tailored to the user’s capabilities are provided. As it cannot be guaranteed that every footpath and every obstacle is charted and up-to-date, users can improve routing information on their own in a crowd sourcing based approach.