Skip to main content

Using technology to make PTSC better

I had planned to do a Q and A with PTSC about using tech and providing a better service but I pivoted and created this blog post. I crowd sourced ideas from social media and added my own ideas. What persons don't see is the hardship and begging and following up that goes into getting responses and questions answered from some entities. Whenever I can do this easily it is like a breath of fresh air. I would expect entities to be willing and responsive to persons working to make a difference.

What's the point of this you might ask? Someone is already being paid handsomely to come up with these ideas you might say. The point for me and my blog is about brainstorming and educating. We want an informed public. We want a solutions minded public. We want a public that is willing to help regardless. Such a public will be in a better position to hold the technocrats to account. Such a public will be able to demand better and decide better.

I would not go into the benefits of efficient public transport in this blog post except to say that there are huge benefits. I like the points raised in this article, 6 Reasons Why Access to Transport is so Important. The government recently announced that we are going to develop a new transportation plan relevant to the modern times we live in. Below are a list of ideas for the improvement of PTSC using tech that are worth considering

  • IoT and Big Data and scheduling software
  • eTicketing for convenience
  • Mobile app that shows when and where the next bus among other things
  • Monthly NFC pass for regular users
  • Using green energy to reduce cost and help the environment
  • Smart bus stops possibly starting with the Connected Arima project
  • Preventive maintenance software
  • Ticket machines in convenient locations
  • WiFi on buses to be productive while in transit
  • Learn from UWI student projects
  • Open data and APIs to encourage developers to contribute their own solutions
  • Tech for the business processes of PTSC. Think like any profit making business.

Share your ideas in the comments and share this blog post so that we get the most ideas. One comment I got that made sense was that the biggest improvement would come from having buses use separate lanes from regular traffic and this has nothing to do with tech. I agree but I still think tech will be needed for data and analysis to tell us where to put these dedicated lanes and the bus stops. Also what would be cost and time to build a network of dedicated lanes? I would bet that tech solutions would cost a small percentage of this.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Below the surface

This is a chapter from my eleventh book called Quotation Marks Sparks . __________ "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." - Jon Kabat-Zinn __________ I was looking at quotes that hit hard and this quote stood out to me. It seems mundane and obvious and often repeated. Life is about how we respond to the inevitable. It is not what happens to us but how we respond. I had to ask myself to dig deeper and look below the surface. Then I saw that when we surf we really become the waves. We become friends with the waves. The waves and us are the same. Further, the waves are created by us and in our heads. We can control the waves because who can surf all the time? Sometimes we just have to come to shore and build sand castles on shore. I asked my friend Gemini for feedback and he said that I was right, the Jon Kabat-Zinn quote initially seems like a simple call for resilience, but my deeper dive reveals profound layers. The idea that we can move beyond merely rea...

Thankful

It is 617pm and I have decided to write. Right now I am thankful. The cool of the evening has replaced the heat of the day. I took a bath and changed and now I am just relaxing. Sometimes I complain. Not often. But I feel bad afterwards because there is so much to be thankful for. There is always room for improvement and we have to identify the things for improvement and change is often good but we do not have to make it into complaints. Yeah I get it. Life is hard and none of us has it easy. Look on the bright side of things. And sometimes it is the little things that remind us that life is good. Things that we take for granted. Like I was coming in the maxi taxi today and heard a gospel song that was about gratitude. God does appreciate a grateful heart. Trinidad and Tobago celebrated sixty four years of independence yesterday and if we stop and listen to the many complaints we would swear we are living in the worst country in the world. That is not the case. We do get a lot of thing...

Installing NodeBB using Termux

This is the ChatGPT prompt I used to be guided Guide me through installing NodeBB using Termux (This took some time and patience to troubleshoot errors and implement workaround) pkg update && pkg upgrade -y pkg install proot-distro git curl wget nano -y proot-distro install debian proot-distro login debian apt update && apt upgrade -y apt install -y curl git build-essential ca-certificates gnupg apt update apt install -y imagemagick apt install -y redis-server redis-server --daemonize yes redis-cli ping mkdir -p /opt git clone https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB.git /opt/nodebb cd /opt/nodebb ./nodebb setup warn: NodeBB Setup Aborted.  Error: Could not load the "sharp" module using the android-arm64 runtime Possible solutions: - Manually install libvips >= 8.18.3 Force node to report platform as linux to get sharp to install curl -LO https://nodejs.org/dist/v22.23.1/node-v22.23.1-linux-arm64.tar.xz tar -xJf node-v22.23.1-linux-arm64.tar.xz mv node-v22.23.1-lin...