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 service vehicles (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.