TAD Travel Assistance Mobile App to Help Transit Riders

1. TADTravel Assistance Mobile Appto Help Transit Riders Sean J. Barbeau Center for Urban Transportation Research & Department of Computer Science and Engineering Research funded by the Florida Department of Transportation, the National Center for Transit Research, and the Transportation Research Board IDEA Program

2. The Challenges Potential Rider Transit Agency Paratransit is expensive: $27.90 per one-way trip versus $3.20 per one-way trip (bus) and can be restrictive to riders Travel training helps reduce learning curve for fixed route transit but demand outpaces supply • Individuals with mental/cognitive disabilities (14.3M Americans, 6% of pop.)¹ often have problems with quick actions required by transit • Paratransit option limits livability and curtails independence 1 - National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. “Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)”, 1997.

3. Solution: TAD - Travel Assistance Mobile App • Develop first navigation app for public transportation using GPS-enabled mobile phones • Alert user when to get off the bus with audio, visual, and tactile prompts • Target simplicity, with cognitively disabled in mind • Use defacto standard General Transit Feed Spec. for data 3

4. TAD Web Page – Create Trips

5. TAD - Travel Assistance Mobile App • Transit Rider Selects Trip That Was Planned On Website

6. TAD - Travel Assistance Mobile App 9:58 9:40 9:57 9:56 9:55 9:54 9:53 9:52 9:51 9:50 9:49 9:48 9:47 9:46 9:45 9:44 9:43 9:42 9:41 2:00 • While waiting for bus, rider sees estimated time until arrival and headsign for bus (vibration alert w/ 5 min. left)

7. TAD - Travel Assistance Mobile App • When the vehicle is within ~2 minutes of arrival, "NOW ARRIVING...” shows, with vibration alert

8. TAD - Travel Assistance Mobile App • On Bus… • Then the user hears: “Get Ready!” a few stops before destination

9. TAD - Travel Assistance Mobile App • Then, “Pull the Cord Now!” when the rider should exit the bus

10. TAD Web Page – Real-time Tracking

11. Field Tests at Five Florida Agencies • Initially developed with Hillsborough Area Regional Transit (HART) in Tampa, FL • With travel trainer Mark Sheppard • Tested in four more counties: • Pinellas • Sarasota • Miami-Dade • Broward

12. Collaboration with Florida Mental Health Institute • Partnered with Florida Mental Health Institute to study impact of TAD on real transit riders • Purpose: • Determine if prompts given by TAD would exhibit stimulus control over participants’ behavior of: • Pulling the stop request cord • Exit the bus at the appropriate stop. • 3 participants with moderate intellectual disabilities riding Hillsborough Area Regional Transit (safeguards in place)

13. Identical Results: 33 Data Points with 3 Participants Exit Bus Request Stop

14. USF Partnership with DAJUTA • USF has partnered with DAJUTA to offer TAD as a commercial service to transit riders and transit agencies • Blackberry app available, Android coming soon… • See dajuta.com for more info

15. Next Steps • Explore how TAD could help other populations • Visual/hearing impairments, physical impairments • Additional collaboration with USF FMHI • Collaboration with Veterans Administration • Other mobile app research: • TRAC-IT – travel behavior research tool • Personalized real-time travel info, based on predicted destinations and paths • OpenTripPlanner – multimodal trip planning

16. Questions? Sean J. Barbeau, M.S. Comp.Sci. Research Associate Center for Urban Transportation Research University of South Florida http://locationaware.usf.edu 813.974.7208 barbeau@cutr.usf.edu