Server-Based Intelligent Public Transportation System with NFC

Mass transit systems have existed for over a century. In the traditional payment structure, tickets, cards and tokens are used for public transportation. Discounts for specific type of riders and benefits coming with transfer fee are only available with cards specifically designed for each city. Balances are kept on fare media, and the cost of ride is calculated and deducted by the validators while getting on the vehicle. This paper proposes a novel server-based fare calculation and user management system for providing personalized exclusive privileges to riders without getting the special card of the province and allows passengers to benefit from all the advantages of the cities' transport pricing. In addition, it removes the obstacles that prevent the use of new technologies such as contactless bank cards and Near Field Communication (NFC) standard like a traditional province card in public transport. The installation of the system with NFC usage was applied on five different cities in Turkey. By collecting and analyzing real-world data, the association rules were found for the proposed system using FP-Growth algorithm as a data mining technique. This paper also presents a comparison of the proposed system with the existing systems to show its advantages.