Case Study
Smart Columbus Multimodal Trip Planning Application (Pivot)
Columbus, Ohio
Challenge
Central Ohio residents rely heavily on their own cars to travel, which contributes to traffic congestion that will only get worse as the population grows.
Solution
The goal was to improve mobility by reducing traffic and increasing access to jobs, education, and services for all Central Ohio residents. Etch built a distributed, fault-tolerant platform made of containerized microservices, that can be utilized for other applications that need routing or geolocation services. This foundation of open, free, and proven technologies where there are no dependencies on subscription services, proprietary code, or commercially licensed data resulted in a containerized open approach that allows all or some platform components to be hosted on multiple systems, or a combination of networks.
The routing network that feeds the OpenTripPlanner routing engine is updated every few minutes from weights that are predicted by the machine learning component. Etch utilized real-time data from ODOT as well as historic information to predict travel time and patterns. The system also analyzes user trip history information and traffic signal data to update the machine learning model to assist with trip planning and navigation
The sophisticated navigation is a combination of OpenTripPlanner and our own deployment of Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM) that stitches together the trip plan by mode so users can see turn-by-turn directions, mode changes, and upcoming stops while on the COTA bus.
Outcome
The final Pivot tool allows users to plan and book a trip using bus, car, taxi, scooter, bike, and/or ride hail. Pivot offers a selection of mixed-mode routes and their associated prices. The route and mobility provider price will automatically update as the traveler navigates along his/her trip. Travelers can customize which modes and mobility providers they wish to use, along with several user preferences including walk distance, number of transfers, etc.
For more information go to pivotcolumbus.com.
Learn more about Etch’s GIS Planning Services
Program planning and implementation
Strategic planning for government and private sectors, including facilitation of multi-departmental entities needing to manage, update and disseminate GIS data
Custom built applications
Open source and proprietary software solutions for integration of multiple systems
Asset management
Asset management that maintains and tracks infrastructure, from data collection to integration with work order management software