Commuters that use public transit recognize how important it is to accurately estmate travel times. Even the slightest miscalculation can lead to compounding delays and consequences and result in as missing appointments or being late to work. It is commonfor public transit providers to post schedules for buses and subways, but many riders will testify that theseschedules are rarely accurate and seldom even followed. Delays, traffic, and a variety of factors can easily shake up the planned schedule and have a buterfly effect causing the entire days’ worth of departure and arrivals to inch later and later. Many riders atempt to avoid this headache by using third-party map applications, which atempt to fetch real-time transit data and estimate the most efficient route – but these depersonalized tools are also often inaccurate and are usually suited for providing an estimate based on historical trips giving users only a best guess of what route they should take.
This project proposes an embedded system that can accurately calculate commute information in real-time for a single user that is personalized and programmed to handle real-time calculations of the most used routes. The system would provide a level of granularity lacking from other tools by targeting specific routes to provide actual optimization of those routes, rather than estimations or best guesses. The system would calculate departure times and notify the user in near real-time if there are changes, delays, or beter routes available without the user having to view schedules, or manually refresh a myriad of transit pages.