Development of a Public Transport Route Planner Application for Abuja Metropolitan Area

Commuters in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory, face significant challenges navigating public transport routes due to the absence of a consolidated, publicly accessible route information platform. This study presents the development of a mobile route planner application for public transport users in the Abuja metropolitan area. The application was built using Flutter (Dart) for cross-platform mobile deployment, integrated with Google Maps SDK for routing and the OpenStreetMap API for bus stop geolocation data. Backend services were implemented in Node.js with a MongoDB database storing route, schedule, and stop information sourced through crowd-sourced data collection from 25 volunteer data collectors. Core features include route search, multi-modal trip planning (bus and minibus), walking direction to nearest stops, and estimated travel time display. Development followed the Agile Scrum methodology with four two-week sprints. Testing involved 80 commuters over three weeks across the Maitama-Gwagwalada and Wuse-Lugbe corridors. Task success rate for finding a correct route was 84 percent. User satisfaction scores averaged 4.1 out of 5.0. The primary identified limitation was incomplete stop coverage in peri-urban zones. The study recommends that Abuja Metropolitan Management Council formalise data-sharing agreements with transport operators to improve database completeness, and that the application be extended to include real-time vehicle tracking when GPS-enabled buses are deployed.

Keywords: route planner, public transport, Abuja, mobile application, commuter information