Tube star: crowd-sourced experiences on public transport

Public transport information systems have been shown to positively affect passengers’ usage of their city’s transport infrastructure, by providing information such as the location and schedules of trains and buses. These systems, however, lack qualitative information about passengers’ ongoing experiences and may be out of date. In this work, we examine how smartphones can be leveraged to provide crowd-sourced information to transit passengers. We have deployed a prototype for London, England, that merges social media with transport statuses and report on the results of a thematic analysis of the content provided by passengers. We have found that passengers readily share their positive experiences more often than reporting problems, and find evidence that crowd-sourced reporting augments the timeliness of status information, for example, via reports flagging disruptions before the transport authority announces them. We close by discussing the limitations of our prototype and how these findings may inform the design of future transport information services.