Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd (PMPML), which operates public transport bus service in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad, has collaborated with Google Cloud to build an intelligent transit management system and track buses live on Google Maps.

PMPML plans to adopt a globally accepted specification General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) for publishing the transit information. Once published on Google Maps, the live transit updates service will allow commuters to track buses real-time on Google Maps.

Google Cloud will work through its premier partner Niveus Solutions Pvt. Ltd and others for this engagement. The tech giant also looks forward to expanding the service to other cities across the country.

“I believe this technology has the power to be replicated across different cities and states in India and make life easier for commuters,” said Bikram Singh Bedi, Managing Director at Google Cloud India.

The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) is a data specification that allows public transit agencies to publish their transit data in a format that can be consumed by various software applications.

The system will be further extended to include the features of transport analytics including asset tracking, predictive maintenance, and incident response in the next phase to reduce the operational cost and increase the revenue. The PMPML will use the available data to provide insights to their management team on different performance aspects of their fleet.

The public transport service provider operates 371 routes around the Pune Metropolitan Region including 117 Rainbow BRT routes that ply the seven bus rapid transit corridors. The new technology will enable commuters to easily find the bus in real-time and make their journey easier.

PMPML has equipped its buses with hardware capable of sending real-time data. The collaboration will help PMPL ingest real-time data from all applicable buses from the on board unit (OBU) system installed on the buses. It will further validate the data for GTFS field values. Then the data will get fed to the Google Maps Partner Dashboard for a complete GTFS validation.

Om Prakash Bakoria, IAS, Chairman, and Managing Director, PMPML said: “This partnership aspires to not only improve commuter experiences but also improve the internal efficiencies of PMPML over time in a scalable and replicable fashion leveraging transformational technologies like Cloud and data analytics. It will change the landscape of the Public Transport System.”