TransLink expands AI planning to improve bus route estimates

Aug 13 2019, 11:03 pm

TransLink has announced that following a successful pilot program it will be expanding its artificial intelligence program to improve bus departure estimates.

“Customers will be able to better plan their journey on TransLink’s new bus network, with a new machine-learning algorithm,” the company said in an email.

The AI is the result of a collaboration between Microsoft and T4G, an intelligent software and analytics company. According to TransLink, the program takes in different factors like weather conditions and travel times at different points of the day.

The algorithm also involves more than 16,000 machine learning models, which is said to provide better predictions over TransLink’s entire bus network.

“During the pilot phase, the difference between predicted and actual bus departure times improved by 74%,” says Kevin Desmond, TransLink CEO.

The new program has been incorporated into TansLink’s Next Bus website and SMS tool. Third-party applications such as the Transit App and Google Maps will also use the new planning tool.

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