Skip to main content

Low public transport usage solved by BusPlus journey planner

BusPlus, a ‘hub and spoke’ off-peak public transport option designed by National ICT Australia (NICTA), will be featured at the 2015 ITS World Congress. NICTA claims this service is particularly beneficial during off-peak times, when public transport is frequently inefficient, poorly utilised and expensive to deliver.
July 31, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
NICTA researcher Dr Phil Kilby has developed a system for new off-peak public transport in Canberra
BusPlus, a ‘hub and spoke’ off-peak public transport option designed by National ICT Australia (NICTA), will be featured at the 2015 ITS World Congress. NICTA claims this service is particularly beneficial during off-peak times, when public transport is frequently inefficient, poorly utilised and expensive to deliver.

The solution came from solving low public transport utilisation in Canberra, by introducing a hub and spoke model to the problem.

Hubs are linked by buses, which run frequently (typically every 15 minutes) to facilitate public transport. Passengers are connected to these hubs by taxis, which will bring them to their nearest bus stop by simply booking a trip online, by phone or by downloading the app – and only 15 minutes before they need to go.

According to Dr Phil Kilby, the beauty of this solution is that the BusPlus system plans the whole route including pickup at a user’s local stop, bus travel, and a taxi waiting at the other end to complete the journey. Passengers may share taxis (up to three passengers per taxi) and, when necessary, minibuses can also be used as shuttles.

Other notable NICTA projects on show in Bordeaux include TrafficWatch, a real-time traffic incident detection and monitoring system using social media, as well as NICTA’s ground-breaking research on CBD hotspot prediction, roads performance estimation and smart motorways.

Related Content

  • New services and equipment helps cities tackle air quality issues
    September 19, 2017
    With poor urban air quality shortening lives and fines being imposed for breaching pollution limits, authorities are seeking ways to clean up their cities. Poor air quality is topping the agenda for city authorities across the globe. In the UK, for example, a report from the Royal Colleges of Physicians and of Paediatrics and Child Health, concluded that poor outdoor air quality shortens the lives of around 40,000 people a year – principally by undermining the health of people with heart and/or lung prob
  • Pandemic ‘proves value’ of emerging world’s informal public transport
    June 9, 2020
    Networks of minibuses fill gaps left by reduced 'formal' services
  • Shotl goes the extra mile for mobility
    March 30, 2022
    Villages and residential suburbs can be good places to live, but often lack public transport facilities. Buses tend to be infrequent and, where they exist, often require public subsidies.
  • Value of time – the key decider
    March 4, 2014
    The ‘value of time’ concept can be a vital decider in prioritising transport projects, as Lorenzo Casullo and Serbjeet Kohli of Steer Davies Gleave explain. How much do travellers value their time and how much would they be willing to pay for a better and faster transport option? For many years Steer Davies Gleave (SDG) has been collecting this type of information from thousands of people across the world as it researches travellers’ behaviour. And given the importance of this parameter for transport mo