PUBLIC TRANSPORT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: A PROTOTYPE PSV TRACKING AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR NAIROBI CITY

Abstract

Vehicle  location  based  services  and  tracking  system  available  in  Nairobi  city  mainly focus  on  private  car owners,  fleet  management  for  various  organization  and  cargo  tracking.  On  the  other  hand, public servicevehicles (PSV) have not attracted much attention of the car tracking companies. Public transport in Nairobi city is  generally  characterized  by  a  lot  of  chaos;  these  ranges  from  poor  management  of  the  vehicles,  traffic congestion, reckless driving and unreliable service provision. PSV owners have been victims of rogue operators who do not submit their full revenues thus greatly reducing their profit margins thus escalating their business running  costs.  The  main  objective  of  the  project  was  to  develop  a  customized  location  based  service  that caters for the needs of the public transport sector in Nairobi city. The project demonstrates development of a prototype open source solution for management of public transport in Nairobi. The solution uses GPS, web GIS and  GPRS  technologies  for  real  time  transmission  of  coordinates  from  the  tracking  device  to  the  central database server and finally rendering on the web page. The development process of the system entailed the analysis  of  existing  systems  in  the  city,  system  design  and  development,  evaluation and  implementation. OpenGTS (Open  GPS  Tracking  System) platform  for  tracking  was  adopted  and  customised  to  the  needs  of public transport in Nairobi.The research provides a cheap solution for effective management of public service vehicles  by  preventing  vehicle  misuse.  The  final  solution  comprises  of  a  web  based  application,  android application  and  customized  query  interface.  The  web  based  application  provides  graphical  visualization  and the customized queries while the android application used by the vehicle operator to update non spatial the database