User-Centric Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks and Roadside Units for Public Transports Systems

Public transportation is becoming more and more importance in big urban centers, as it is a key ingredient to sustainable cities. Still, richer and more diverse public transport services imply increased complexity to the users of such services. In this chapter, the authors address the problem of journey planning for public transport users. This problem can be described as finding the best route between two given points in a city taking into account the available public transport services. The authors describe and compare traditional approaches that are already deployed in most cities. They then focus their attention on new and promising alternatives that become possible with the emergence of user-centric vehicular ad-hoc networks, complemented with roadside infrastructure. The authors discuss the benefits and challenges behind this new approach for journey planning in public transportation, and propose directions for possible solutions.