Bus tracking Technology and Thai public transportation

On any given day in Bangkok, Thailand, you can find more than 20,000 buses, minibuses, and vans operating on 470 routes. In a city of 8 million people with another 14 million in the greater Bangkok Metropolitan Region, public transportation is a necessity. Unfortunately, public transportation can also be a great liability. GPS technology in public transport not only functions as a tracking device. It is also a form of deterrent to unsafe road practices. A bus driver will take more precaution and adopt road safety measures knowing that their vehicular usage is being constantly monitored.

 

Zero accident in public transportation can come to reality as in the beginning of 2016, Department of Land Transport has enforced all new-registered public transportation, trailers and lorries with 10 wheels or more to install Vehicle GPS Tracking Device . All data is linked to Department of Land Transport’s Transport Management Center to accommodate tracking and observe driving behavior. To follow GPS Across Thailand project, the department intends to, by the end of 2017, have all public transportation vehicles installed GPS. GPS Across Thailand project will surely improve the safety standard of Thai public transportation which will successfully gain national trust.  According to statistics, accidents in public transportation occur mostly from drivers’ driving behavior and entrepreneurs’ management system. Namely, drivers exceed speed limit, drunk drive or entrepreneurs let drivers work long hours which violates safety standard.

Therefore, to sustainably improve safety standard of Thai public transportation, Department of Land Transport has initiated GPS Across Thailand project to track and control both entrepreneurs’ management and drivers’ driving behaviors by using GPS technology.  All data is real-time linked to Department of Land Transport’s Transport Management Center. It would be interesting to see if the accident statistic decreases after launching this new measure. Ultimately, the most significant matters are driving discipline and strictly following traffic regulations. 

By selecting one of the bus routes, commuters can see a map of their surrounding area, as well as their own location, with the route and stops clearly marked out. When a bus service is active, customers can see the position of all the buses on the route, and they can track the progress of the vehicles as the app refreshes every 30 seconds.

 

"This is going to provide a great opportunity for people to see where buses are at any point in time in our system, literally down to the second as they move," said Sam Veraldi, director of a Bus Company. "The system offers us a tremendous amount of efficiency by letting us and our passengers know where vehicles are and where they'll soon be." The Thai government has also enforced a tilt test for all buses of 3.8 metres or higher to see if they can move in move in stability even with a 30 degree tilt angle. This test adds further security to the GPS technology to eliminate both structural design and human errors as causes for road accidents. 

The Thai government has also banned the operating licenses for new double decker buses. The Thai Transportation Association however cited ‘’human errors’’ as the main cause of accidents and not the technical structure of the buses. This will make GPS technology more relevant in curbing the high rate of road traffic accidents in Thailand.

More details at jimilab.com .