Leveraging Electronic Ticketing to Provide Personalized Navigation in a Public Transport Network

Public transport networks (PTNs) are difficult to use when the user is unfamiliar with the area she is traveling to, as shown by a user survey that we present in this paper. This is true for both infrequent users (including visitors) and regular users who need to travel to areas with which they are not acquainted. In these situations, adequate on-trip navigation information can substantially ease the use of public transportation and be the driving factor in motivating travelers to prefer it over other modes of transportation. However, estimating the localization of a user is not trivial, although it is critical for providing relevant information. In this paper, we propose the use of an electronic ticketing infrastructure of a PTN operator for positioning within the context of the PTN to give on-trip personalized navigation cues. To our knowledge, this is an innovative contribution that has not been described or deployed, to date, elsewhere. We assess relevant design issues for a modular cost-efficient user-friendly on-trip navigation service that uses position sensors and present the details of a proof-of-concept prototype running in our laboratory. We also present and analyze the results of a user survey on the usefulness of the service and its acceptance by users.