Challenges in Crowdsourcing Real-Time Information for Public Transportation

Public transportation is a key enabler of mobility in today's urban environment. Transportation service operators are exploring various technologies in order to be able to provide passengers accurate real-time information to plan their journeys. For them, the challenge is often in understanding where, when and how there is a demand. With rapid advancements in mobile technology, crowd sourcing or participatory sensing can be thought of as a medium by which information can be collected, augmented and used for better planning as well as a mode to deliver real-time information to commuters. In this paper, we conduct an extensive review of both literature and applications using mobile crowd sourcing with a focus on the public transportation domain. We identify certain common challenges across various techniques proposed and applied, categorize them and discuss possible future research directions into these areas.