- Software Setup - Many orders of magnitude less expensive as Bus-Lambda relies on cloud hosted serverless application architecture.
- Hardware costs - Many orders of magnitude less expensive as the system relies on a single Raspberry Pi Zero "W" device which, as of this publication, costs $10 per unit. The power source and mobile internet hotspot cost $50 and $40 in New York City, USA, respectively.
- Maintenance costs - Many orders of magnitude less expensive as the entire system, once deployed, can be supported by a single full stack software engineer. Furthermore, individual devices can be easily configured and replaced because of their low cost and simple configurability.
Future Work
Bus-Lambda's objective is to empower any surface transit agency across the world to implement a low-cost, scalable, and easy to maintain real-time transit information system to significantly enhance public transit ridership, safety, and quality of experience. Future work of the Bus Lambda project includes but not limited to the following core issues and can be tracked at \cite{bus-lambda} :
- Integration with the GTFS transit data specification.
- Incorporating contactless payment systems.
- Enhancing integration with on-site power and internet connectivity sub-systems.
- Open source licensing of software.
- Sales and Deployment Strategy.
- Comprehensive cost analysis of network-wide implementation compared to existing solutions.
- Low-cost electronic signage systems.