Night bus tracker completed
The Ministry for Infrastructure and Planning has announced the completion of the real-time bus tracking service that covers all the working routes offered by the Gibraltar Bus Company.
The final route, the Night Bus Route N8, which was commenced as a pilot scheme, will appear as from this Friday April 28 on the Bus Tracker Web App alongside all the other routes.
This route will only be visible on Friday and Saturday nights between the hours of 9pm and 2am, which is when this route is operational.
“It gives me great satisfaction to announce that the Gibraltar Bus Tracker WebApp has now been completed and includes all eight of our Bus Routes, one year from the launch of the initial two routes in April 2016,” said the Minister for Infrastructure and Planning Paul Balban.
“We believe this feature has improved the public transport experience of bus users by facilitating real time information. This major STTPP public transport target now brings the local bus service into the 21st century and in line with what can be seen in many major cities of the world. I must congratulate IT & LD for their magnificent work as this very technically complicated project has been carried out internally,” he added.
The Gibraltar Bus Tracker WebApp, has been developed by the Information Technology & Logistics Department and uses location data provided by enhanced dedicated GPS devices mounted inside each bus. This information is then transmitted wirelessly to a tracking server using on-board cellular equipment. The developed software integrates the geographical bus location data with the bus route information which is then embedded within Gibraltar’s geoportal maps to output the information displayed on the WebApp.
In November 2016, a new feature was added to the WebApp which gave the user greater detail on the location of each of the buses on route and provides added information of the buses’ last recorded position and any other anomalies, explaining possible reasons for this.
The Gibraltar Bus Tracker WebApp offers users real-time bus information. From any smart phone or desktop computer with internet access, people are able to access the website, select a bus route and see a transit map that displays where buses are located within the given route. The buses move across the map in real-time.