Nepal/Yatayat
Yatayat: Open Source Public Transportation for Kathmandu.
Introduction
“Yatayat” is a series of projects around open source public transportation in Kathmandu that include transit data collection as well as development of web, mobile, and SMS applications for routing passengers.
This is necessitated by the fact that there exist to date no reliable systems in which the public can look up a public transit map, with routes, fares or stops. In truth, the latter is quite flexible, but is nevertheless loosely bound to neighborhoods along which a route runs. We sought to document and map these stops in a small way to begin the ambitious project of putting Kathmandu’s public transportation on the map.
Till now
MonsoonCollective
This concept was born during the MonsoonCollective Initiative 2012. You can read about it here http://monsooncollective.org/2012/07/public-transit-mapping-a-first-person-perspective/ . This month long time included creation of basic frameworks and data collection resulting in a web and android app.
Monsoon Collective contributors: Prabhas Pokharel, Robert Ochshorn, Sakar Pudasaini, Suveg Pandey, Shirish Pokharel, Anshu Khadka.
Kathmandu University
This was a spark that brought together a group of enthusisatic students from Kathmandu University. These mappers/ hackers/ developers decided that this project was necesary and they would continue it. Every system needs data, and that is what this group focused on. From the group of 5, 3 would be actively involved in data collection.
Data lies in no man's land, The Department Of Transport Management (the authority which coordinates the actual Public Transport System) would offer the data but in papers (this does not mean that it is understandable), while the developers need them in digital form (atleast an excel file). Hence the no man's land. Department of Transport Management has data for whole Nepal, we only need for Kathmandu Valley. Then we tried the Transport Commitees, which manage individual routes or routes in one area. During this 2 months, almost all the routes were collected, and correctly mapped in OpenStreetMap.
After collection is presentation, The interface was improved, more information was added. The internal code base was also more stabalized. See the github repo for details. https://github.com/monsooncollective/yatayat
KU contributors: Suresh Shrestha, Prabesh Shrestha, Prakash Ghimire, Amrit Gautam,
Supervisors: Shashish Maharjan, Subash Ghimire, Amrit Karmacharya.
KathmanduLivingLabs
KathmanduLivingLabs, an organization which promotes OpenStreetMap acivities in Nepal, got interested and has taken the role of further development and promotion. It was presented in various mapping parties, like ICIMOD YOUTH MEET, GIZ. Leaflet Tweeted as one of the awesome maps made using Leaflet.
KathmanduLivingLabs contributors: Amrit Karmacharya, Poshan Niraula.
Present Status
The webapp is under active development, by various groups. Development activities are coordinated by Prabhas Pokharel and Amrit Karmacharya
Future
The code is hosted open source in github. Contributions are welcome. There is also a suggestion box in the app where you can suggest.