If you’ve ever spent more than three days using public transport in Rijeka, you’d know it can be a very frustrating ordeal. We haven’t yet adopted Zagreb’s system of panels that announce upcoming tram and bus arrivals – we stand around and wait, longingly looking at the horizon and hoping for the next bus that appears to be our preferred line. To be fair, in the last couple of years, they have been following the schedule much more closely than before, but due to hellish traffic in Rijeka, it’s not a rare occasion to be left waiting way more than you should have.
That’s why the following piece of news is more than worthy of attention for all of us who either live in Rijeka or plan to visit in near future. Two smart bus stops have been installed in the city centre, equipped in a way that will significantly improve the experience of using public transport for the citizens and visitors alike, reports Poslovni dnevnik on October 12, 2017.
The stations are seen as a unique technological step towards the smart cities of the future; they are the end result of a pilot project that the City of Rijeka carried out in collaboration with Ericsson Nikola Tesla, Hrvatski Telekom, Smart RI, Autotrolej and Rijeka promet.
Both smart stops have been installed at two key locations in the city – in Trpimirova Street and at Žabica, in the area around the main bus station that gets the most traffic throughout the day. They offer multiple functions the passengers are sure to find convenient: the stations will serve as hotspots powered by Hrvatski Telekom, providing people will free wi-fi to use while they wait for the bus. Thanks to other integrated solutions created by the participating companies, passengers will also be able to charge their smartphones, laptops and other gadgets. The smart stops are equipped with sensors that measure temperature and humidity, while the next development phase will entail integration of additional information about promotional offers, cultural events and entertainment in the city.
The best feature of the smart stations just might be the app that allows passengers to track bus traffic in real time. The app is called Smart Bus Stop (Pametne autobusne stanice); it includes the timetable for all city lines and shows the exact location of any selected bus on a map of Rijeka. The traffic will surely continue to mess with our minds, but from now on, the waiting process might just be a little bit easier to handle.
