Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This project kind of grew out of, uh, an earlier project where weíd been tracking travel behavior
using GPS-enabled cell phones and trying to respond to a clientís request of Florida
DOT about how can we help the cognitively disabled use transit more often. We thought,
well, our technology could be applied here. We thought, well, this would really help somebody
to be able to tell where they are at, um, to be able to tell their caregiver, their
parent where their people are at so it could help people use transit more often.
I thought that this might be a project that would be of interest and could, ah, help the
people who are now in paratransit but need to be moved on to regular route transit. A
route transit bus ride costs about a dollar. A paratransit bus ride costs about 30 dollars,
and so it is within the best interest of the transit systems to move people out of paratransit,
which is the home-to-destination transit, into regular route transit.
The device is, ah, simple off the shelf, um, cell phone equipped with a GPS unit that is
able to track the personís location and then it signals them, based on where theyíre at
in real time, when to pull the cord, for example, when to get off the bus, which bus to get
on, and will give them other, uh, clue, either in the form of vibrating or a voice that theyíre
familiar with about what actions to take.
We have software running on the transit riderís cell phone and that is theÖthe system that
actually provides the transit rider with the notice to get ready and to, uh pull the cord
now, or to get off the bus, uh, so in theory if the cellular network completely goes down.
because this is a software running locally on the userís cell phone, ah, it should still
give them the proper alert to exit the vehicle.
Many times when people have cognitively impaired children, those children are cared for intensively
as children, but when they grow up and turn into 20, 30, 40 years olds they donít have
the intense services that younger children have so for a parent to help a child get in
a work situation, and then be able to take care of themselves as they age. This allows
them to have that freedom of movement and to be able to care for themselves.
ìVery often itís gonna take more than one bus to get to your destination so youíre
gonna have to transfer from one bus to another. Now thatís the convenience of the TAD is
in the programming of this trip I can put as many segments as needed. So as soon as
you get off that first bus, itís looking for this next bus stop. Soon as you arrive
here then all of a sudden it says, ëIím ready for the next trip.í If you noticed
it already has the distance ëtil our next stop. I didnít have to shut it down, I didnít
have to start it up and pick another trip. It allÖit goes in stages like that.î
The people that have had the opportunity to test this, the first thing they want to know
is, ìWhere can I get one?î The parents are very excited about it because it not only
offers them obviously a good source of communication ñ the cell phone, but also it does the travel
assistance device, insuring that they get off at the right stop. On top of that, if
by some reason they miss their stop, the phone will alert the caregiver and me that theyíre
off route, so we can call them and says, ah, ìWe see that you not where you supposed to
be,î and it also gives the opportunity if Susie didnít get off the bus at 4:30 and
in the door where she normally is, the mom or the caregiver can go to their computer
to that TAD program and find out where Susie is.
What are you supposed to do?
Pull the Cord.
Hold the cord.
Hold the cord.
And when it says pull itÖthen when it says pull, then you do it. Lay your hand on it,
be readyÖletís get readyÖ
Job requestedÖPull the cord now.
Excellent!
When they have accomplished the travel training course and theyíre proficient at their designed
trip that that is encourage their hearts so much that they can accomplish a hard task
and be successful that other tasks that theyíre given in their education they take on more
easily. They are willing to accept them and theyíre succeeding at them.
It allows either the travel trainer or the parent themselves to even set up and plan
their routes, taking advantage of Google Transit and other existing services that are offered
by the transit company. So they can plan the, the route and program it themselves. The software
is easily downloaded from the web onto their own cell phone.
Weíve just tried to design the Travel Assistance Device Project to, uh, make it as easy as
possible for new transit agencies to adopt. Uh, weíve been working with Hillsborough
Area Regional Transit over the last two to three years and we realize that, um, from
the get go, if ah, itís a lot of, uh, labor and effort to get, um, to adapt the Travel
Assistance Device to a new transit agency. That would really hinder the, um, the spread
of, of TAD to additional transit agencies so, um, weíre using, uh, the Google Transit
Feed Specification, which is a common data format, uh, now adopted by over 260 transit
agencies around the world. And what this does is allows the transit agency to export their
data in a common format and then for us to use that to both maintain our system, uh,
with up to date route and bus stop information as well as, ah, when we want to add new transit
agencies to the TAD system we can literally do that with a click of a button.
This could be a tool that helps to reinvent the use of transit and the populations that
have not been able to use it up in the past but that will be able to use it in the future.
The researchers will work with additional transit riders, travel trainers, and transit
evaluate stakeholder satisfaction.