Barrier-Free Travel Support Service

Overview

In 2021, the number of registered persons with disabilities in Korea was 2,644,700, accounting for 5.12% of the total population. However, due to inadequate mobility rights guarantees, persons with disabilities require 2 to 3 times longer travel times compared to non-disabled individuals, and 45.3% go out three times or less per month. Accordingly, to improve the quality of life and convenience for transportation-disadvantaged individuals, it is necessary to derive optimal travel routes through the integration of various transportation modes and provide comprehensive services (barrier-free services) such as call and reservation systems. To this end, this project developed and opened an API, and utilized it to develop public transportation information guidance and taxi services for transportation-disadvantaged individuals.

Project description

The System was developed to open the necessary APIs for the service, enabling high-utilization private taxi platforms (such as KakaoT and T Map Taxi) to easily integrate public taxi features for transportation-disadvantaged individuals.

• Transportation Accessibility API Development
  • The project developed and released an API that provides mobility-support data for people with disabilities, allowing integration with commercial navigation services. The public transportation API provides information on fixed-route, scheduled public transportation such as buses and trains available along the route to the destination. The taxi API developed functions such as taxi hailing based on user information and data retrieval for voucher payments to provide services linked with local governments.
• Implementation of Taxi Services for Transportation-Disadvantaged Individuals
  • The service includes an app that provides welfare taxi service information near the departure location for individuals with mobility challenges and supports voucher payments and settlements for local governments.
• Platform Enhancement
  • The platform was enhanced to allow private taxi-hailing services (such as KakaoT) to provide functions like reservation and hailing for local government welfare taxi services. Additionally, for persons with disabilities. The project also plans to develop a demand forecasting service model that analyzes boarding information using AI to minimize taxi waiting times for call taxi users and thereby enhance satisfaction.

Key technological features

• AI-Based Route Optimization Algorithm: Deriving Optimal Travel Routes Through Intermodal Transportation Integration
• Development API: Low-floor bus route information, barrier-free train information lookup, mobility-impaired passenger lookup, taxi call list lookup, operation history lookup

List of Newly Developed and Opened APIs

Public Transportation API
① Low-floor bus operation information API along travel routes
② Barrier-free train information query API

Taxi API
③ API for Querying Transportation-Disadvantaged Individuals
④ Taxi Call List Inquiry API
⑤ Trip history inquiry API

Expected outcomes

By creating a barrier-free environment, the urban environment will improve, making mobility and daily life more convenient for all citizens. Enhanced mobility for wheelchair and stroller users, as well as those with limited mobility, will increase social inclusion and expand opportunities for marginalized groups to participate in society. Furthermore, providing safe route guidance and transportation convenience information is expected to reduce traffic accidents.

Launch year: 2023

Attribution

Case study courtesy of the National Information Society Agency, Republic of Korea, Apolitical's Content Partner. Sourced from Use Cases of Public AI Service, Vol.1,  https://eng.nia.or.kr/site/nia_eng/ex/bbs/View.do?cbIdx=31975&bcIdx=28997&parentSeq=29006