There was a report recently that said researchers at IBM had redrawn the bus routes of Ivory Coast's largest city using mobile phone data.

The BBC report said the research was completed as part of the Data for Development competition run by Orange. Such data could be used by urban planners for new infrastructure projects, BBC quoted IBM as saying.

IBM's AllAboard project used call data which pinpoints location based on which phone mast a person is close to when he makes a call.

Can our transport corporations use this method to rationalise bus routes? It isn't impossible. Mobile penetration in India is high enough for such a project. Are our Government-owned transport corporations capable enought to collect or use the data? Yes, if we go by what the transport corporations in Bangalore and Chennai are doing.

Using GPS to track buses

The Metropolitan Transport Corporation in Chennai uses GPS to track buses and send the data to bus stops to display the expected time of arrival. Though the project may not be functioning as expected, it shows that implementation of such high-tech projects is not difficult. A friend who travels frequently between Bangalore and Chennai was all praise for the inter-state bus service. He was surprised to get an SMS with the details of the bus (with the registration number) and the crew (mobile number). He even tested the information by calling the crew saying he was unable to locate the bus in the bus terminus. The crew responded politely by directing him to the place where the bus was stationed.

IBM is not the first company to use mobile data. Google uses it to record traffic on city roads using the data generated by mobiles of those using the roads. In both the cases, the data is anonymous. The user does not have to do anything extra. He has to use the phone as he usually does.

Reduced travel time

In the Ivory Coast case, they found that the project could reduce the travel time of people by 10 per cent across the city. The report quotes a senior scientist as saying that if they could have "merged the telco data with city data, such as the bus timetables, we could have the potential to completely change the existing network."

"Analysis of public transport and telco data would show how people move in a city and allow planners to create a bike sharing infrastructure from scratch, for example," the scientist says.

Mobile data provide information about where people are at a particular time of the day. It can also provide information on which bus routes they take and the time they spend waiting for buses. This is more reliable than blind assumptions by transport officials.