A Term Paper on “Location based Transportation service”

Submitted by: Sachin Kumar Choudhary | Roll No: 10BM60074

MBA 1st year – Vinod Gupta School of Management – IIT Kharagpur

ABSTRACT

Location Based Transportation service

With fast population growth in Indian cities and an increase in private car ownership, it is significant to
re-evaluate and support the role of public transport in the urban transportation landscape. In light of
the focus on importance of improving public transport, there is an opportunity to align our
technological resources to endorse this often uncared sector, which would have far-reaching effects.
In India, public transport is not fully suited to the environment in which it operates; it is operated in a
crude and inefficient manner. Due to inefficient operation transportation present a grave problem and
insufficient contribution to public transport in major Indian cities.

This paper details the overall exploration of an advanced tracking, monitoring and sharing system for
public transport (like auto-rickshaws), as well as future conceptual technologies for public transport
which can be used from your mobile phone. The proposed mobile phone system is meant to match
and exceed the conventional operation of transportation as public transport system with a more
intelligent and efficient operation. The technical development in this papers aim location based mobile
application and social networking to address problem like traffic jam, taxi tracking, taxi pooling,
navigation etc. There are many benefits to this technology, such as effective use of capital employed
lower public transport costs and reduced emissions. We shall be using reformed form of existing
technologies like Google latitude, Airtel phone locator and SMS gateway service. We will also see
how this can reduce cost of our transportation.
INTRODUCTION

In this paper we are trying to address a very common problem of a ‘aam aadmi’.. Here we are talking
about problem of transportation and we will discuss how existing technologies can resolve your
problem of transportation. Before we proceed further, let’s look into a situation to understand why a
problem of transportation in a city, specifically in a metro, is a big issue. For a while just suppose you
are a working class employee, working in a metro city. Like most of working class you are highly rely
on public transportation for your day to day commutation. Now try to figure out, what could be the first
tension that worries you when you get up in the morning. Is it the assignment you are going to get
today in office or the presentation you are to make to your client? Believe me, for most of the office
going people; it is to catch the taxi to reach office on time. But why catching a taxi or public transport
bus is a worry? It is majorly because of lake of clear information about the available nearby means of
transportation. In this uncertainly, one has to keep high tolerance between his/her actual office time
and perceived timing. Now since it clear to us from above given example of our routine life, why public
transportation is important, let’s have more detailed look of public transportation.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO WORK ON THIS

The importance of public transportation is evident based on an analysis of the following viewpoint

Integrated Public Transport System [1]

 Promoting taxi in a city is a key part of developing an integrated public transport system and
stalling the growth of private cars.

 Discouraging Intermediate Public Transport (IPT), such as taxi, would eventually result in
increased private car ownership, since the service provided by taxi, such as access, point-to-
point connectivity, and privacy, may not be matched in many cases even by an excellent bus
system.

Space

 There is a strong rationale to promote intermediate public transport (IPT), such as auto-
rickshaws instead of private cars, as it would lead to freeing up land in a city. For every new
private car in a city, a minimum of two additional parking spaces are required in the city (one
at home and the other at the destination). A taxi, on the other hand, only requires one parking
space in the city.
  Since there are typically no parking fees for private cars in urban areas, current policies
significantly subsidize car owners.

 An taxi should be promoted over a private car as it carries on average the same number of
people, while taking one-third the parking area and occupying half the space as a car while
moving.

Costs

 Taxi, owing to their smaller size, consumes about one-third the national resources in their
production, compared to private cars.

 Lower capital costs also imply that taxi serve as a low-cost mode of transport for low- and
middle-income populations.

 Due to their lower weight and slower speeds, taxi cause less wear-and-tear of pavement
compared to cars and other heavy vehicles, thus lowering highway maintenance costs.

Environmental Benefits

 On a per passenger basis, taxi produce lower emissions compared to private cars, due to
their smaller engines (around 175 cc compared to over 800 cc for cars).

 With the conversion of taxi to compressed natural gas (CNG) in Delhi and conversion of 2-
stroke engines to 4-stroke engines, emissions from this sector have been addressed to a
large extent. Similar opportunities exist in other cities to make taxi more environmentally
friendly.

Safety Benefits

 Taxi are safer compared to private cars for non-motorized users of the system such as
pedestrians and bicyclists, since they are smaller in size and travel at lower speeds.

 Research has shown that the presence of auto-rickshaws on the road reduces speed
variations in traffic flow and helps maintain traffic flow within a particular speed range. This
would mean that the presence of auto-rickshaws in the traffic mix creates safer travel
conditions (since speed variations in traffic can be a major cause of accidents)

From the above listed analysis it is quite clear why we need to discuss about sustainable
development of public transportation. Now more or less all of us are aware of the facts listed above
and we also understand rationale behind it. But what is prohibiting us from encouraging public
transportation? The primary reason behind people cite for not able to promote public transport, that
public transport is not available on their finger tips as it is the case with personally owned vehicle.
WHAT IS OUR PLAN

Ping ping…zzzz, kinnng kinngg zzzz--- please excuse me for a second. I have a SMS and Airtel
friend locator alert too on my cell phone. As I am taking a break let me check Facebook updates on
my cell also. Ohh Airtel friend locator service is awesome. It can trace my entire friend around me on
blink of my eyelid. My phone shows three of my friends are available in radius of 1km from me.
Another friend of mine has asked me in SMS to locate position of our MIS professor using Google
latitude on my GPRS phone. How easy it has become to locate people in the city. I also have
Facebook update from my friend that he is heading towards south-east Delhi from Noida sector 13 in
his new car. Wait a minute, seems like we have the solution of the problem we were discussing
above. Can I have such alerts on my mobile every morning or whenever I require locating available
taxi? Can we use tools like google latitude, Airtel friend locator and social networking site to make
public transportation available on our figure tip? Let’s have a look how these tool works and then we
will see how a modified form of these tools can help us resolving our problem addressed in this paper.

Google Latitude Service Lets You Track Your Friends: How It Works

What Latitude can do

Once you and your friends have opted in to Latitude, you can see your friends' Google icon displayed
on Google Maps. Clicking on their icon allows you to call, email or IM them, and you can even use the
directions feature on Google Maps to help you get to their location.

How it works

Let's say Megh wants to share his location with his girlfriend Jane. He invites her to accept his
invitation through his mobile device or computer. Then Jane can accept and share her location back;
accept but not share her location; or completely reject poor Megh. If Jane has chosen to share her
location with Megh, she can decide whether to share her best available location or simply which city
she's in. Jane could also hide her location to keep ol' Megh in the dark from time to time, or if Jane
breaks up with Megh for her neighbour Rakshit, then she could just remove Megh from her location
list altogether.

In addition to restricting specific people, Latitude will also let you do a blanket location setting for all
your contacts. You can choose to let Latitude detect your location automatically, you can also set it
manually if you prefer or you can hide your location completely.
Airtel friend locator

Bharti Airtel, the leading GSM mobile operator in India introduced a unique product some days back
knows as Airtel Friends locator. Ever thought of keeping tracks of your buddies when you are relaxing
in your sofa? Well Airtel brought a solution to that by introducing Airtel Friends Locator with this
unique now you keep a watch on your friends wherever you want and whenever you want. Airtel
Friend Locator is a cool, first of its kind, location based service which lets you stay closer to your
friends and surprise them. We can add up to 10 friends on the Airtel network after taking consent from
them, organize them in groups, find their location, set periodic updates on individuals or groups and
locate our self

Current status of LBS in India [2]

According to industry estimates, 40-50% of handsets sold today are GPRS-enabled. Even then, few
people who own GPRS sets use them to access the Internet.
Apart from the low internet usage in mobile devices, LBS in India have not yet taken off in a big way
because of the following reasons:

 Lack of reliable GIS data : volatile infrastructure, lack of fine grained deterministic data
 Limited and ever changing Infrastructure
 Too many languages, location names do not follow any convention (there is a formal name for
a place and then, there is the commonly used name.)
 Cost/Maintenance of devices.

ECONOMICAL FEASIBILITY

Now it is evident that we have feasible technologies to make our problem a solution. With 3G and
Wimax coming to India, we can have internet and data exchange through at affordable cost. But so
far we do not have any application tool to help us out with our day to day transportation problem.
Before we proceed further and discuss what our technological application tool is going to be like and
what it will use, we must have a taker of our business idea or plan. Does it sound economically viable
to provide service like location based taxi/transportation locator on mobile? Whether telecom service
provider will be interested in selling their service to their customer? Who are the people get benefited
with these? And how our business technologies will contribute to the society? Let’s address all
questions one by one.

If we look at the current infrastructure of telecom industry, we will find that telecom operators are well
equipped to provide transportation service solution through mobiles.

Present day operators are facing the biggest hick of declining ARPU(Average Revenue Per user) and
increasing churn so how can Value added services HELP? A sharp decline in average revenue per
user is being witnessed due to tumbling tariff rates. Entry of new operators has aggravated this and
tariff rates have hit rock bottom levels. Thus, telecom operators are seeking ways to increase their
per-user revenue and VAS has become one of the key focal point. To make this more attractive
vendors and operators have started focusing on innovative solutions and local content to increase
consumer stickiness along with improving the adoption rate of these services. If sold with the right
[3]
pricing and segmentation techniques it can win huge revenue returns.

THE GAME PLAN

Now, since we are sure enough that we have a taker of our product let discuss in detail what our tool
will look like and what are the features of the application. We have three parties with us here – The
end user/ passenger, who wants to commutate from one place to other, the facilitator / taxi driver and
the telecom service provider. As we want both parties to be actively connected through some mean,
we assume that both actively use mobile phone. To use our application end user / passenger and taxi
driver should allow their mobile phone to send and receive details of their location via telecom
operators. Telecom service provider has to ensure to create segments within urban area (possibly
around transmission tower) to identify the locations of the mobile user based on the signal
triangulation technique. The identification of location will be based on the source of signal which the
mobile is receiving at a given real time period. Once we have the identification of mobile users
location (passenger and taxi driver in our case), this information can be shared between the
passenger who wants to travel from one place to other and the taxi driver who is sitting idle in search
of a customer. Sounds great, but just imagine how much data sharing will take place if it is not
structured. Telecom provider will not be position to handle such a huge volume of information for a
value added service. Also all information will not be use full for everyone. A person who is travelling
from place A to B is only interested in getting the details of taxies available in area A. similarly a taxi
driver will not be interested in sharing details of its location to the customers located across city. So it
means we need a filter to keep the information in a scalable condition, which can be used by the
person at other end. To make information more structured, driver can allow exchanging details of their
location to the restricted area (area of their operation) only and this information can be shared with the
person wish to travel from a particular area. In this entire information exchange process drive need to
share its location information continuously during his business operating hours but same need not be
the case for a person travelling from one area to another.

As we have huge information data of location of different person who are in need of each other. A
simple transaction of exchanging information may serve the purpose of both the parties. But we want
to do more for adding the value to this transaction. Think of a situation where you are travelling from
Noida to south Delhi. You have located a taxi with our taxi locator service and taxi has agreed to drop
you to south Delhi in `100.00. How one can add more value to your this transaction? Suppose driver
charges you only ` 75.00 for this ride instead of ` 100.00. But why a driver will do this? Certainly a
driver will be ready to charge you less, if by doing so he earns more money. At this point telecom
service provider, who has huge chunk of information, can add value to this transaction by suggesting
both the passenger and the driver about the interested people who wish to pool taxi. It is very general
that two different people may wish to go from one place to another at the same time. Let see the total
economy of the whole transaction.

Determined
Actual cost /
cost / Cost of value Net saving /
Player (earning) per
(earning) per addition (profit)
trip
trip
Passenger 1 ` 100 ` 75 `3 ` 22
Passenger 2 ` 100 ` 75 `3 ` 22
Taxi Driver (` 100) (` 150) `3 (` 47)
Service provider - (` 9) `1 (` 8)

It is a win-win situation for all- for passengers, for taxi driver and for service provider. Not only
economical, but it has environmental benefit also. With same resource and fuel, per capita pollution
has reduced from 50% to 33.33%. With help of information sharing service, with limited number of
taxi, more people can travel from one place to another. Ideally in a taxi three passengers can travel
easily. With more passengers per taxi, both economical and environmental benefit will increase
further.

Are we satisfied with the benefit we have derived out of collected information in the above
transaction? May be, but we have more to do with collected information. We always feel that city
Municipal Corporation is not efficient to plan traffic and transportation in city. Can information
collected by us, be useful for Municipal Corporation? Let see what more we can interpret from the
collected data. Once we have details of various people moving from one place to another, we can
interpret which area is going to have heavy traffic and accordingly Municipal Corporation can advise
traffic control police to divert routs in the city. So now we have solution of our traffic jam problem also.
Still you can do a lot with the information collected by service provider but the discussion of that is
beyond the scope of this paper.

Above we have seen how a simple location based mobile service application can help us in resolving
our various transportation problems. Still above technique have its own limitations. It usage and
information sharing is limited by number of telecom player in the field and by contractual obligation
they have among them.

Social networking has become an integrated part of our life now. We share lots many information with
various people. In this paper we will see how Facebook or other social networking site can help you in
resolving your day to day transportation problem. We have discussed about the Google Latitude
application in earlier section of this paper. Solely Facebook and Google Latitude have its own
features. If we see these features separately, we can’t find a technique which can solve our real time
problem effectively. In this paper we will see how a combined application of Google Latitude,
Facebook and mobile phone can provide feasible application to resolve our day to day transportation
problem.

[4]
We have Facebook ‘suggestion’ which can be useful. Suggestions is a feature that helps you
connect with people you are likely to know, as well as engage with your confirmed friends on
Facebook. Facebook calculates Suggestions based on the networks you are a part of, mutual friends,
work and education information, contacts imported using the Friend Finder, and many other
factors. Since this feature is automatic, it occasionally identifies people that you do not know or do not
want to be friends with.

[5]
We have Google latitude ‘locator’ which can be useful. It allows you to broadcast your location to
select friends, family, and colleagues based on the coordinates of your cell phone (via GPS or
otherwise). If you have the GPS feature enabled in Google Maps on your mobile phone, you are
probably familiar with the reassuring, pulsating blue dot on the map that represents you wherever you
go. Google Latitude is now essentially letting you share that blue dot with anyone you like. Google
Latitude is a full mobile application in and of itself. You can keep track of where everyone is at any
given time, and from within the app you can call, email, or IM them. Everyone you have opted to
follow shows up as a picture icon on a map or in a list view. The list view is like a location-based
Twitter.

What we need in this application to work is that both the taxi and the passenger to be registered on
the Facebook and both should have his/her mobile registered with Facebook. Online Facebook users
need to update his/her destination of travel. Now if we club Facebook and Google latitude, the
integrated application will update your real time location via your mobile using Google latitude and
based on your real time location and location of taxi driver or others, Facebook can provide you
suggestion of possible taxi availability around your locality at a given time which is heading toward
your destination. Not only taxi, it can provide you suggestion of car pooling and live traffic status on a
particular route. Now, along with various information on Facebook, you have a piece of information
that you can use every morning. The benefit derived out of these is same as we discussed above.

With our location based transportation solution technology, customise information can be shared
among various people. But much safe is it to pool a taxi with people you have never met. We can
have solution to this problem also. India is expected to come up with UID. Unique Identification
Number (UID) is a recently finalized initiative by the Government of India to create and manage a

centralized identification system for all the adult citizens and residents of India, which can be utilized
for a variety of identification purposes. Telecom operators and social networking site can send the
UID details along with taxi pooling suggestion. Hence you can use UID to know the persons history
before believing to travel with. Moreover it becomes more safer, when you car pooling history is being
recorded with telecom database. In case of any misshape, telecom service provider can locate the
details of person, they have suggested by location based transportation VAS.

Fig: Screen shot of your mobile phone with Location Based transportation service on it

HOW THIS TECHNIQUE IS DIFFERENT FROM GPS

In Contrast to GPS location finder, LBS tracks location of a cellular user through cell signal
triangulation, Wireless internet access with GPS as an optional reinforcement technique. However,
we do not a GPS feature on your mobile phone. There are more differences as follow

Parameter Location Based Service GPS

It provides your It provides your
Reach
reliable location and time reliable location and time
 information/details at all times in information/details at all times
a fixed local area irrespective of your location on
earth

It locates your location using your It uses Global navigation satellite

How it do
cell phone signal system

It provides a raw information

It provides a processed ready to
Information which has to be converted into a
use information
usable form

It uses existing mobile phone It need a hi-tech satellite for

Infrastructure
tower for locating your position operation

As it provides processed As it provides raw information, it

Economic benefit information, it can drive revenue can't be us for general purpose
directly easily.

There are many telecom Though there are many

industries that can use this industries using this technology,
Takers
application for revenue penetration of this technology in
generation. local market is very small.

THE CHALLENGES

The major challenge currently is lack of awareness regarding the accessibility of these services by
telecom industries and the marketing effort that is needed to facilitate customers to know that services
are obtainable. In today’s scenario where every telecom operator has zillions of value added services
available, there is inadequate bandwidth to teach the market about new innovative services, even
when subscribers could end up being pleased by the utility offering.

However, the final responsibility is on the DoT and the telecom operator to market the location-based
services, so that the information reaches out to the end subscriber. If the service is marketed in a
targeted approach, people will adopt this technology and when the innovation like this comes down to
the bottom of the pyramid, the usage potential is huge.

The technology cannot be implemented but for one has access to detailed information like the
coordinates,/ location of the mobile phone tower (transmission base station) that a mobile phone is
connected to. We would also require to know the direction of the mobile phone tower's antenna and
it’s allowed sector width, signal strength, and timing data etc.

It is almost difficult to get mobile phone antenna/tower information from each and every telecom
operator. The connected mobile phone tower identities and strength of signal at a range of places in
the entire world can be collected by recording the info at all important local areas. Additional
information can be obtained by recording distinguish public WLANs and their signal strengths.

CONCLUSION

This technology is fairly useful to determine the wide-ranging location of the mobile phone and it
makes using maps very simple. Yet this has less accuracy than GPS devices. In near future, this is
unlikely to replace GPS-enabled devices. In a developing country like India where most of use rely on
public transport and cannot afford to have more personal vehicles, location-based technology that
helps in resolving transportation issue is a salutation. It is need of the day to have regulated and more
efficient transportation system for our urban cities. With DoT and other telecom provider coming up
with 3G technology in couple of month application like location based technologies can be utilised in
very efficient manner. Also it has many economical advantages for telecom industry to provide
solution like application to resolve your transportation issues.

To conclude, in the end, it is about what suits best for different people. A person carrying a mobile
phone and there are millions times as many of those as there are mobile phone users, will definitely
be thankful for having location-based transportation solution on a plain their phone.
REFERENCE

1) [1] http://mumbai.thecityfix.com/why-auto-rickshaws-matter-for-india/
2) [2] http://www.pluggd.in/mobile/location-based-services-in-india-key-players-bsnl-
3) [3] http://telecomtalk.info/category/editorial/
4) [4] http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=925
5) [5] http://techcrunch.com/tag/google-latitude/
6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System
7) http://www.google.co.in/
8) http://www.bing.com/?scope=web&mkt=en-IN&FORM=MSNH64