Happy Chinese New year! Most of the Chinese are moving back to their home town for re-union and back to the city where they work after holiday, which is a massive human migration event annually, and we call it “chunyun”(春運), which translates to “spring transport” in English. Predicted that the numbers of passengers who take different transportation in “Chunyun” are as following, 2.48 billion passengers would take vehicles, 389 million would take train and 65 million would take plane.
Before or during the Chunyun, people are grabbing for a single train or flight ticket, traffic jam are serious on highway, flight delay (28% of flight in 2016), and this crowd environment create chances for crime, for example the pick-pocketing, scalper tickets etc.
Technology and big data is here to ease the situation.
Devices and application
Thanks to the widespread penetration of mobile phone and internet, most of the people can access to application assists in task finishing. People can use application called Gaotie Guanjia, the automatically monitor the ticket availability and order train ticket; this can help people to ensure a ticket back to home, also decrease numbers of people queuing before ticket office. Alipay and Wechat Pay is available at the ticket office, this can help minimize the time on receive and exchange money manually.
Internet of Things
Passengers who travel through Shenzhen and Guangzhou train station do not need to print out their train ticket, but enter the station directly by scanning their national ID cards. Facial recognition software is adopted by Hainan high-speed train station, passenger can access to station with their face and within three seconds, much shorter than manual check-in previously. At the same time, this technology is on a trial basis at Beijing’s Airport also as a means for verification for passengers to board their flights.
Big Data
With real-time data streaming, people can access to real-time traffic condition and plan the optimal route back to home.
With data, transportation provider can have a planning and demand modeling. They can get insights on the peak time, demand on different route etc., in order to improve planning on the train routes, frequency and size of trains.
Transportation provider can install sensor on the track or any equipment to monitor the function ability and predict maintenance. Faulty train can cause serious consequence, for example delay in coming scheduled train, frustrated passenger, over-crowed station etc. Therefore guarantee on smooth transport is very critical.