From providing timings of suburban trains, MRTS and Metro Rail to crowd-sourced real-time data of MTC buses, mobile app iCommute aims to ease travel for commuters.
Two years ago, Revanth Mallikarajuna, a 29-year-old resident of the city who started this app with his friend G. Dileep Kumar, says, “As commuters, we struggled as we didn’t know the timings of buses and local trains. From a location anywhere in the city, a commuter should be able to know the nearest modes of transport services available for him and the app will show that.”
Apart from displaying timings of MRTS, suburban trains, MTC buses and Chennai Metro Rail, the app goes one step ahead to provide real-time data of suburban trains services. The app so far has 35,000 downloads and 5,000 active users.
If a commuter is near Nungambakkam and wants to travel to the airport through suburban train, it will show him the arrival time at Nungambakkam station and also the expected time of arrival to airport, he says.
For MTC bus users, the app employs crowdsourced real-time data with two options,‘Check-in’ and ‘SPOT’. These two allow a user of the app to know the location of various buses coming to his area through the other users of the app itself.
“For instance, if I board 27B at Egmore and I click on ‘Check-in’ mode, then another user of this app waiting for the bus at Chetpet will know that the bus is likely to reach soon as the app will track the bus through all the stops till I reach my destination ,” he added. With ‘SPOT’ feature, the app will only show the time a user has boarded a bus but doesn’t track the entire journey.
“To protect privacy of our users, no one will know who has checked-in or used SPOT. This will only inform the users the location of a bus and doesn’t reveal their identity,” he adds.
Karrthik Ramjee, 42, working professional, who started using the app eight months ago, says he is able to plan his travel in advance as he knows the bus timings and location. “If I’m going to meet my client in north Chennai, I know what time the bus will reach the nearest stop close to my residence and how long it may take for me to reach,” he adds.
