Improved Information Services in Public Transport for People with Reduced Mobility

1. Josef Becker Jörg Franzen Helmut Heck Susanne Dirks Improved Information Services in Public Transport for People with Reduced Mobility ASK-IT International Conference 26.-27.10.2006 Nice

2. Motivation • Population and Public Transport: • About 6.7 Mill. people in Germany (8.1%) are registered as “severely handicapped” • 20-25% of the population is “mobility impaired”,permanently or temporarily, when travelling with public transportation

3. Motivation • Improvement of Public Transport System during past 20 years: • railway stations and bus stations were improved • better accessible busses and trains • visual and auditive information systems in vehicles installed • guidance systems at stations established

4. Motivation • Still: • Many barriers for mobility impaired people remain. • Information on barriers and barrier-free traveling is fragmented, incomplete, distributed, not well accessible, out of date.

5. Goal • to support or to enable the active and independent participation of people with reduced mobility in public transportation by the provision of usergroup-oriented, accessible information services on barrier-free travelling opportunities

6. Idea • to provide information on barriers / barrier-free paths / assistive devices / accessible information systems / special information services in public transport • to search for “barrier-free travelling chains” for individual travellers (routing) • to provide the information in an accessible way before and during the journey

7. transfer unit Barrier-free Routing

8. Project Data • Project partners • Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund GmbH (project leader) • Verkehrsverbund Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH • FTB of Evangelische Stiftung Volmarstein • HaCon Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH • IVU Traffic Technologies AG • SemanticEdge GmbH • Duration: 9/2005 - 4/2008 • Funding: German Federal Ministry for Economy and Technology • Info: www.baim-info.de

9. User Involvement • Continuously (project partner) • Rehabilitation centre with research institute for assistive technology (FTB) • Regularly (meetings) • Expert group including user representativeson barrier-free travelling (RMV) • External expert group including some user associations • Task-oriented (user requirements analysis, user tests, and evaluation) • User focus groups at RMV, VBB, and FTB consisting of people with disabilities

10. Project Plan Phase 1 regional services, plan data 2005/2006 state of the art analysis finished user requirements analysis finished data management, data collection finished realisation of the services finished tests (autumn 2006) in process evaluation (winter 2006) in preparation user requirements analysis in preparation data management, data collection realisation of the services tests (autumn 2007) evaluation user requirements analysis data management, data collection realisation of the services tests (spring 2008) evaluation Phase 2 regional services, actual data2006/2007 Phase 3 nation-wide services, actual data 2007/08

11. User Requirements Analysis - Phase 1 • Literature research • Results of other projects / state-of-the-art analysis • User inquiry • expert interrogation • user representative interrogation • Continuous support by a working group on barrier-free travelling (RMV) • feedback on methodology and results of the investigations • inspection of places, buildings etc.

12. User Groups • deaf people • hearing impaired people • people with communication disorder • people with cognitive / mental impairment • people with organic mal-function • people with allergies • people unable to walk • walking-impaired people • people with impaired upper body and/or upper limb • very small people • very tall people • blind people • visually impaired people Strongest information needs of which group? User Focus Groups – Phase 1

13. User Requirements • Rating of the importance of attributes of vehicles, buildings, information systems etc. • before the travel • during the travel • Relevance of attributes for the user focus groups Which information for which group?

14. User Requirements Which information media are relevant? • Media • PC is the main medium for planning the trip • speech information (telephone) is important before and during the trip • PDA regarded as of limited use (-> needs to be investigated in phase 2) • mobile phone: applicable (for speech or text, depending on user group)

15. User Requirements Which services are important? • Services before the travel • information on travel connections (“travelling chains”) based on plan data taking into account known disturbances and operational faults • customised information and services • station plans and detailed footpaths • not important: pictures/photographs

16. User Requirements Which services are important? • Services during the travel • very important: effective advice and failure indication • information based on real data • not important: indication of small delays • navigation systems are regarded to be of low value

17. User Requirements Which services are important? • But:Requirements vary very much even within the groups • e.g. powered wheelchair <-> manual wheelchair

18. Information Services – Phase 1 • Detailed dynamic station descriptions • dynamic station plan • dynamic legend • textual description (incl. mp3 file) source: RMV

19. Information Services – Phase 1 • Detailed dynamic station descriptions • graphical representation of a path • textual description of a path source: RMV

20. Information Services – Phase 1 • Planning of barrier-free travelling chains • user category profiles • individual selection of spec. requirements source: RMV

21. Information Services – Phase 1 • Description of barrier-free travelling chains • additional information for user category source: RMV

22. Telephony Speech Recognizer Dialog System Backend Information System Speech Synthesizer Information Services – Phase 1 • Speech-based information • WWW: dynamically generated description of stations and paths • textual -> TTS • mp3 audio file • telephone-based information service • spoken dialog system source: RMV

23. Information Services – Phase 1 • Mobile services • text/ audio files • time-tables • station plans, attributes, routing etc. via WAP/ HTTP/ JAVA source: VBB source: traffiQ source: RMV

24. Driving Service Management Stopping Point Management infopool of plan data BAIM Information Services static data Vehicle Data Management HAFAS Server dynamic data Automatic Vehicle Monitoring Integration of dynamic data Automatic Lift Monitoring Data Management

25. Tests – Evaluation – Requirements • Accessibility test of web-sites (experts) • Usability test of information service (experts) • User evaluation(30 users from user focus groups) • User interrogation(108 users from all user groups)

26. Further Tasks • Personalising – individual user profiles (-> research) • Integration of real-time information(e.g. late arrivals of trains, change of platform, status of elevators) • Push services via SMS or eMail • Dynamic station plans (according to user profiles) • Dynamic foot path routing (especially for big station buildings) • Efficient data management (-> economical sustainability)