A pilot project titled TransportTV introduced on Moscow buses to provide passengers with useful information about their journey is proving a hit with its test audiences, who have rated the system an average of 4.7 out of 5 in an online vote since it was launched on January 14.
More than 50,000 people have rated the project on the Active Citizen feedback website. The TransportTV system, which uses geo-targeting to keep passengers up-to-date on where they are and to warn them of possible delays, will be tested for one or two months before a decision is taken on expanding the program.
The information screens are currently being tested on Moscow buses. Photo: http://ag.mos.ru/experiments/71.
As well as providing information on traffic conditions, estimated arrival times and nearby places of interest, the system also allows passengers to leave reviews of their journey and driver, municipal transport authority head Yevgeny Mikhailov told Rossia TV channel.
“This is a whole new level of interaction between passengers and the transport company that enables us to understand passengers far better,” he told the channel.
TransportTV was created by RosInnovation, a company from the Siberian city of Tomsk that is now a resident company of the Skolkovo Foundation’s space technologies and telecommunications cluster.
“The preliminary results are phenomenal: more than 50,000 Muscovites have already voted, and about 84 percent of them rated it the maximum five marks,” said Maxim Zharenov, the project’s manager at Skolkovo.
“We’re glad that the work of this team from Tomsk has been so highly rated by residents of the capital, and hope that the introduction of the TransportTV system on city buses will be a step in Moscow’s transformation into a smart city in which it is comfortable and convenient to live,” he said.
Nearly 50,000 people gave the service the top marks of 5 and 4.
Photo: http://ag.mos.ru/experiments/71.
The system is operating on no. 959 buses, which run from the Mitino district to the Stockmann department store in the northwest of the city.
TransportTV is already installed on public transport in its native Tomsk, and is currently being rolled out in St. Petersburg after a pilot scheme launched there in the autumn also proved a success.