On-line monitoring of public transport: the version of Yandex
Relatively recently, Yandex, without any special announcements, released a beta version of the new mobile application, Transport . These are maps of cities where the movement of buses, trolley buses, trams and minibuses is displayed online. While the service is available for public transport of Kazan, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Perm, Nizhny Novgorod, as well as the Moscow region. Developers immediately ask not to cling to the bugs, so there’s no point in focusing on specific defects.
The value of such a system for a simple inhabitant is difficult to overestimate - it is very convenient to plan movements around the city and think over routes clearly knowing that the bus will arrive at the stop in 5 minutes or, on the contrary, in the next 40 minutes you should not wait for mercy from Mostransavto and in the rain, in the sun) you need to choose alternative options for moving - taxi, walking, etc.
Approaches to the implementation of such an application can vary, and so far, Yandex has chosen the most unsuccessful, in my opinion, concept: When opening an application, all the buses that fit on the map flicker on the screen. Then you can specify a specific route number - then only buses will remain on this route.
')
The approach implemented, for example, in a similar Ekaterinburg service “Where the Tram and Trolley Bus” seems to me to be significantly more meaningful. In it all the functionality is tied to the stops and the direction of movement from these stops: you choose the stop and the direction and the system shows all the trams that will pass through it in the right direction in the near future.
The developers of “Where the tram” clearly focused more on the needs of the user: after all, it is clear that in 99.99% of cases the particular passenger is not interested in the whole picture of the public transport movement. Moreover, he is not even interested in the movement of all buses or trams along a specific route: Why do I need a bus going in the opposite direction or 5 minutes ago I left the bus stop I needed?
The user of such an application, as a rule, is interested in the opportunity to leave the place in which he is currently located. It seemed to me that the developers of Yandex Transport were still thinking much less about this than the developers of Where's the Tram.
A further development perspective, in my opinion, is that the user could set the starting and ending points of the route, and the service would display all public transport, the trajectory of which corresponds to the specified parameters.
It would also be interesting to look at the solution in which routes with transfers are implemented, when the user sets the starting and ending points, and the service prompts the composite route and takes into account the actual traffic flow. Such an application could suggest that you can get to the transfer point quickly, and the next bus will have to wait for the transfer for a long time, or vice versa the transfer with a 90% probability will pass quickly (taking into account traffic jams, statistics and other factors).
In general, I really hope that the service will soon work in Moscow. I hope that the developers of Yandex will pay more attention to the general approach to the implementation of the functional, and not just to individual technical details.
I also very much hope that competing applications will appear in Moscow and the region, whose developers will have not only the skills of drawing smooth movement of green points on the map, but also a meaningful look at the needs of ordinary passengers.
The value of such a system for a simple inhabitant is difficult to overestimate - it is very convenient to plan movements around the city and think over routes clearly knowing that the bus will arrive at the stop in 5 minutes or, on the contrary, in the next 40 minutes you should not wait for mercy from Mostransavto and in the rain, in the sun) you need to choose alternative options for moving - taxi, walking, etc.
Approaches to the implementation of such an application can vary, and so far, Yandex has chosen the most unsuccessful, in my opinion, concept: When opening an application, all the buses that fit on the map flicker on the screen. Then you can specify a specific route number - then only buses will remain on this route.
')
The approach implemented, for example, in a similar Ekaterinburg service “Where the Tram and Trolley Bus” seems to me to be significantly more meaningful. In it all the functionality is tied to the stops and the direction of movement from these stops: you choose the stop and the direction and the system shows all the trams that will pass through it in the right direction in the near future.
The developers of “Where the tram” clearly focused more on the needs of the user: after all, it is clear that in 99.99% of cases the particular passenger is not interested in the whole picture of the public transport movement. Moreover, he is not even interested in the movement of all buses or trams along a specific route: Why do I need a bus going in the opposite direction or 5 minutes ago I left the bus stop I needed?
The user of such an application, as a rule, is interested in the opportunity to leave the place in which he is currently located. It seemed to me that the developers of Yandex Transport were still thinking much less about this than the developers of Where's the Tram.
A further development perspective, in my opinion, is that the user could set the starting and ending points of the route, and the service would display all public transport, the trajectory of which corresponds to the specified parameters.
It would also be interesting to look at the solution in which routes with transfers are implemented, when the user sets the starting and ending points, and the service prompts the composite route and takes into account the actual traffic flow. Such an application could suggest that you can get to the transfer point quickly, and the next bus will have to wait for the transfer for a long time, or vice versa the transfer with a 90% probability will pass quickly (taking into account traffic jams, statistics and other factors).
In general, I really hope that the service will soon work in Moscow. I hope that the developers of Yandex will pay more attention to the general approach to the implementation of the functional, and not just to individual technical details.
I also very much hope that competing applications will appear in Moscow and the region, whose developers will have not only the skills of drawing smooth movement of green points on the map, but also a meaningful look at the needs of ordinary passengers.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/217033/
All Articles