INGENIEUR
Figure 5: Smart-phone
applications such as Google
Maps and Waze offers crowdsourcing of Floating Car Data
to provide real-time traffic
conditions to road users.
(Source: Google Maps and Waze
Official Website)
throughout the city. The centre
can directly manage more than
7,000 traffic signal controllers
to ensure smooth traffic flow
(Figure 4). Information on traffic
conditions are then relayed to
road users via variable message
signs and live traffic report
broadcast.
Floating Car Data
In recent years, Google and
Waze Mobile tapped into the
opportunity offered with the
growing use of smart-phones:
the floating car data (FCD).
The Google Maps and Waze
GPS applications essentially
transform every vehicle with an
active smart-phone into sensors
that continuously transmit their
data about their position in
order to generate crowd-sourced
traffic information. This results
in highly accurate real-time
display of traffic conditions and
navigational guides directly to
users, enabling them to make an
informed choice on their routes
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on the go (Figure 5). Google and
Waze will likely achieve a higher
degree of accuracy with the ever
growing smart-phone market.
ICT also plays an essential
role in improving the service
quality of public transportation.
Unlike private cars which offer
the convenience of door-to-door
travel, public transport users
usually need to go through
several modes of transport
between
their
origin
and
destination. Public transport
users rely heavily on information
on the public transport service
such as routes, scheduling,
stops, transfers, ticket fares
so as to properly plan their
journey. Having this information
accurately creates a pull factor
that attracts people to use
public transport rather than their
personal cars or motorcycles.
Shifting people away from use
of private vehicles to other more
sustainable modes of transport
such as public transport is
considered one of the three key
strategies of “Avoid, Shift and
Improve” to reach the goal of
sustainable transport.
Google Maps
Web
and
smart-phone
applications for travel directions
such as Google Maps are
great tools to get step-by-step
instructions that guide users
to their destinations (Figure
6). It also offers comparison
of different travel options such
as different routes, number of
transfers, estimated journey
time, travel by all available
public transport modes or travel
by bus only. Locally developed
navigation applications such
as gothere.sg for Singapore
provides
more
detailed
information such as travel fares,
time-sensitive directions for bus
and train service, detailed bus
info and arrival times (Figure 7).
Taiwan Taxi
The cloud-based Taiwan Taxi
service, an upgrade from their