Congestion in the metropolis of Nashville has nearly doubled in the past decade and is expected to keep growing in future. Several constraints limit our ability to add more bandwidth to the roads and highways. Therefore, it is important to lessen the burden by encouraging public engagement with the public transit system. Led by PI Abhishek Dubey, under a research grant from the National Science Foundation Cyber Physical Systems Program, a team of researchers at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems, Vanderbilt University are building an intelligent service hub for public transit. 

The Transit Hub platform integrates data streams generated from sensors including automated vehicle locators (AVLs), personal smart phones and beacons to provide context, traffic and event-aware real-time travel planning services to city residents, commuters and visitors. As a result, anyone with mobile Internet access will be able to compare travel times for all available options – biking, walking, public transit, driving and more. For the city planners, the system provides data analytics support to help improve the overall transit network design and schedule adherence.

An initial prototype of this work was presented at the Global Cities Teams Challenge in DC over the summer. More about this work can be read here http://engineering.vanderbilt.edu/news/2015/8989/.