Ethiopia’s First Ever Trip Planner App
Addis Ababa, being the capital of Africa and the seat of AU, is growing in population size and the city is ever changing with new infrastructures. Hence, the residents with an estimated number of more than 7,000,000 people and an additional of estimated 3,000,000 people who come in and out of the city daily for business require well planned and structured transportation services information. The city’s transportation administration operates two major public bus services serving more than 210 designated routes daily. Furthermore, there are more than 500 routes that are serviced by informal minibus taxis, with additional two routes covered by the Light Rail transport. These transportation service providers operate in their own rights with their own scheduled time and route. The government operated buses and the light rail follow a routine time and route schedule and the minibus taxis have their own route schedule. Although all of these transport modes operate in a structured manner they mostly use their own stops and stations. This requires the development of a well planned and maintained trip planner application, that would allow residents of the city to properly utilize these services equally.
AddisMapTransit is built on top of the Trufi Core, following a similar implementation in Cochabamba (Bolivia) and Ghana. It’s inception was the result of the availability and accessibility of public transport digital data collected and processed by Ministry of Transport and WRI. It aims to provide standard format termed as General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) based public transport trip planning options for the mass. Such standardized data will allow us to help provide the public with scheduled and consistent trip options using multi-modal (alternative transport means) options to select the desired route. The main objective behind trip planner application is to allow the public have options in accessing various transport means at any given time and place. Traditionally such services were only available as a general information printed on the back of pocket calendars. As mobility becomes a crucial part of a city’s socioeconomic development, it is important to focus on shifting towards current and modern digital solutions that offer more access to information.
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