Strathclyde Public Transport (SPT) is responsible for public transport services in the west of Scotland. Its JESS (Journey Enquiry Support Scheme) project aims to implement a system to support the telephone and face-to-face operations by SPT's travel enquiry staff at seven offices throughout Strathclyde. JESS will also develop an Internet enquiry service and JESS Public Access Terminals. This paper outlines the operation of JESS as a whole, including its operational requirements and system architecture, but concentrates on the JESS client. The JESS client was developed to meet the operational and functional requirements of the JESS specification, but was also developed to be user-friendly. Therefore, several users were involved in developing the JESS client interface, which has been designed for use by trained travel centre staff, and enables more sophisticated enquiries to be made and alternatives to be examined easily. The JESS client enables a user to find out how to make a specific journey, according to various characteristics such as origin and destination and their nearest public transport stops, date and times of departure and arrival, and various interchange options. The system uses a routeing algorithm based on the Pathfinder program.
Abstract