Soon, Delhiites can live-track public buses in city

New Delhi: Delhiites will soon be able to track and plan their bus rides much like one tracks food delivery from mobile applications as Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot on Friday announced that his government was already in talks with Google India to make this happen.

Senior officials aware of the development of the project in the Delhi government told Millennium Post that the new collaboration is expected to help users have access to real-time updates of buses, their routes and timings considering the real-time traffic scenario on any given route.

According to one senior official in the Transport Department, the department had already in "some ways integrated Google maps with the One Delhi application" but the live feed of all buses on all routes will be allowed only after its launch, which is expected to be around July 14 for the time being.

The Delhi government has said that it has been working to ease the public transport system and enhance the user experience by collaborating with Google India to make the public transport sector user-friendly.

In a tweet, Gahlot revealed that the government is at the final stages of integrating all public transport systems with Google, which will help commuters in the Capital. He tweeted, "Delhites can very soon plan their bus journeys to the minute. We're at the final lap of integrating all our public transit systems into GoogleIndia platform, which will utilise Open Transit Data of Delhi Govt & live data of buses to create a reliable Multi-Modal Transit planner."

The difference with this collaboration is that even now details about buses on each route are available for the user but live details are not and the current traffic situation is not calculated hence this affects the expected time of arrival of the buses for the user, another senior official from the Transport Department said.

The linking of live feed from the DTC buses to Google Maps will provide accurate real-time data of the time and distance that will be taken to reach the destination along with the real-time location of the specific bus will be shown to the user.

"The way you track your pizza delivery from a restaurant, similarly, you can track a specific bus," the senior official said, adding that the bus driver's data will not be shared with Google and neither will any other personal data be shared.

Only route-tracking will be permitted and as DTC buses already have an existing GPS tracking system installed, this live feed will be linked to Google.

Talks with Google India are in the final stages with access to live feed being set to be provided for the launch day. Along with Google India, the Delhi government has also collaborated with IIIT Delhi to efficiently roll out this project.

CM Arvind Kejriwal had also tweeted about the initiative stating that the Delhi government will utilise technology to make the city's transport system user-friendly.