Hyderabad: About 3,502 RTC buses will finally be GPS-enabled by the end of August. Two additional features that will be introduced are SMS alerts regarding bus delays and a mobile application to keep commuters updated regarding the delays.
A Web portal is also under construction to update bus schedules within two minutes. Recording time of cameras has also been increased from two days to six days to report any untoward incident.
“The new SMS update service will provide more help to commuters regarding bus timings and also help them plan their schedules if there are delays. All they have to do is to install the mobile application and send the four-digit code of that particular bus stop with the required bus route number to this facility and they will immediately receive all the details.
Apart from this the new Web portal will have all the bus stop numbers with an interactive map to track the status of their bus in advance,” said M. Rajashekar, senior IT manager, RTC.
The Rs 17-crore project, likely to be called the Hyderabad Intelligent Transportation System (HITS), will cover a total of 1,886 JNNURM buses and 1,600 long-distance buses, which will have a GPS device, an antenna, a GPRS device and a camera with a recording capacity of six days to report .
A pilot project was conducted with 44 buses across two routes in the city, for 127 K (from Koti — Kondapur) and 222 (from Koti to Patancheru). Currently, there are 1,347 buses equipped with the facility in Hyderabad and the others will soon be equipped too. Three long-distance routes, Hyderabad to Bengaluru, Hyderabad to Karimnagar and Vijayawada to Tirupati, have also been GPS- enabled.
