Smart Commuting

This study considers an embarrassing situation faced by many commuters, especially those in Hong Kong. Suppose a bus is approaching your nearest stop but you are still on the way. The headway is so large that you must not miss the bus. What’s worse, alternative routings are sparse or virtually non-existent (think of any area with little to no public transit in your region to make sense of this).

To run, or not to run, that is the question.

Thanks to wearable devices, always-on connectivity, and open data, we can design a system (pictured below) to tell a commuter when it is better to give up and to find an alternative way to commute. Though the design and the algorithm are simplistic (and naive), they can be easily extended by considering optimal stopping problems.

You can download the slides here.