Most college students use the string “wru” in sms which is an acronym for where are you?, this simple “wru” gets the location from the replier. This simple protocol will be extremely useful in innumerable applications in the world. The most useful application of “wru” protocol will be in the high traffic cities where public transport is widely used and is prone to irregular traffic delays.

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  • If a simple sms with “wru” sent to a dedicated toll free number fetched the current location of the bus we are looking for, time could be so well organized, utilized and adapted to the crests and troughs of traffic delays. In Bangalore, on an average people commuting via buses spend 60 minutes a day in waiting for bus, and 150 minutes a day traveling in the bus. So “wru” protocol has the potential of reducing total average commutation time by around 30 %.
  • This system will help to know if the bus we are looking for has already passed away, delayed, canceled etc so that we can make alternate arrangements.
  • Querying “wru” to buses with multiple routes can help to plan the itinerary to reach home in shortest time, shortest wait time at the bus exchange terminals etc.

Since sms responses can be delayed, we can instead have the mechanism where commuter can call a particular toll free number uniquely associated with a bus/route and the current location of the bus can be uttered as the customized hello tune. Global Positioning System (GPS) on each bus should identify the current location of the bus being queried “wru”. Since GPS technology is getting more precise, economical and widespread, the implementation of this service should be easy and cost effective and can offer more features such as estimated time of arrival, alternative buses, seat availability, etc.

This idea can be fueled by development of a dedicated network protocol so that there can be a simple light weight application on every mobile phone that can query a vehicle and get the location. This development will help to better manage the telecom traffic that this service can generate, authentication, and spam prevention etc.

Collective response from the buses can be used for extremely useful analytic and statistical inferences like area wise traffic intensity tracking, congestion recognition etc.

  • Bus operating agency can send more buses in the most congested routes to alleviate congestion.
  • Vary traffic signal “Red light” times across the city to assist swift traffic flow for the congested route.

And lastly, this technology can be scaled to get the location of any object whose “wru” response can be used to for various applications such as tracking, anti theft, accident prevention etc.