Field of Invention:

The recent invention relates to a method and system for real-time multi modal, multi route public and private transportation and travel options integrated with itinerary, scheduling and payment facility. The method has transportation facility for humans, and goods.

Background of the present invention:

Private transport services for taxis and autorickshaws have been widely used by the commuters as there are multiple problems related to traffic and increasing number of vehicles specifically in urban area. To avail these facilities, commuters have to download the respective services into their mobile handset. Every city has its own cab services and the travellers have to download the app. Each service provider has its customized system which commuter has to follow. There are cities where public transport such as metros and locals are available as a mean of public transport. Mobile based system for such transports are also available and user needs to download it too. Apart from this, mobile has number of other applications separately downloaded for each individual service to fulfil the daily requirements of the user. To handle all these application systems together into a single mobile handset, the mobile handset must have more Random Access Memory (RAM) and or high end processor(s). Such mobiles are very costly for common people. Also, these numbers of application systems into a single handset reduces efficiency of the handset drastically since all these applications are running simultaneously in the background, even when the mobile handset is idle. In such cases, power requirement is also very high, which results in draining the battery of the mobile handset very fast. Hence frequent charging is required which consumes electricity. If the mobile is completely charged in two hours it consumes electricity from 0.006 to 0.014 units or kilowatthour (kWH). Let us say that if the number of handsets in a particular city is 300,000, then the total power consumed for a single charging per day will be from 1800 kWH to 4200kWH (https://www.bijlibachao.com/appliances/charging-a-mobile-ph one-how- much-electricity-does-it-consume.html).

Another problem of such application systems is non-integration. That is, when the commuter wishes to travel by metro or city bus, he/she has to travel till the pickup points such as bus stops or metro stations using another mode of transport through its respective service application system. Once the commuter reaches station or bus stop, he/she has to book the ticket for metro or bus manually. Applications for private taxis do not allow to book metro tickets or bus tickets and vice versa. Or there is no application system available which avails the facility of booking of two or moremodes of transport for a single trip. There are application systems which help the commuter for navigation and shows shortest route using multiple modes of transport or plan the trip using multiple modes of transport. Such application does not have facility to plan and book the trip on a single click. Also, does not have facility to manually plan and book the trip.

Similarly, while using multimodal transport for a single trip, distribution and collection of payment is also an issue to be answered to where there are multiple sub-trips using multiple mode of transport used in a single trip.

Similarly, there are mobile applications which provide suggestions for multimodal transport and multi-route trip. But these applications do not provide a booking system to book the trip. Such systems,

1 ) Do not have a method to schedule the vehicles associated with that trip,

2) Do not provide booking facility, therefore they cannot manage trip cancellation process and trip cancellation charges handling. Similarly, when a commuter wishes to book a trip and a taxi is standing nearby, he/she cannot book that taxi directly. The commuter has to book the taxi through its usual method and chances are less that the taxi standing nearby will take the call. The taxi which will take the call will also take time to reach the commuter for pickup. This consumes time. Similarly, most of the service providers operate in areas which are crowded. This creates a lot of delay for pickup or unavailability of vehicle in the areas which are not crowded or which are remote areas of that city.

Prior Art:

US7925540 discloses a computer implemented method comprising in response to an identification of a user and an event attended by at least the user, automatically offering, via a computing device, a travel itinerary comprising at least one service to the user based on an electronic profile of the user, the profile including historical travel data of the user and known user preferences of the user from a first database; and contextual information from a second database different from the first database, the second database not containing profile information, the travel data, and the known user preferences of the user, the contextual information unrelated to the profile information, travel data, and the known user preferences of the user, wherein the contextual information comprises historical travel patterns for a plurality of destinations, ground transportation options at a plurality of airports, costs for the ground transportation options at each of the plurality of airports, transportation, Wi Fi, hot spots, the existence of rental services at the plurality of airports, and information relating to avail ability of electronic communications at a plurality of locations, and providing the services on a personal calendar of the user, the providing the services including calendaring time segments on the calendar for one or more segments of a trip; and identifying, on the calendar, communication options for different segments of the trip, the communication options indicating a plurality of modes of communication preferred by the user based on availability of the user and the contextual information during each of the different segments.

(The above mentioned invention provides itinerary based on past history of the user collected by the system whereas the present invention provides itinerary based on real time availability of the third party vehicles used into the travel plan.)

US20020016724 discloses a system and the corresponding method for booking international multiple-stop tickets. The system comprises at each node of an information network a global ticket reservation center which provides real-time information of global airlines and online booking and sale services, with at least one terminal device which provides customers an operating interface to book international tick etc. The disclosed invention provides a method for at least one user who uses each terminal Sale device distributed in the information network to accomplish the online operations of inquiry and arrangement of flight Schedules, inquiry of ticket prices, making reservations, cancelling reservations, and changing the Schedule for international tickets. Besides, he invention also provides travel plans that take the price and travel time as the prior consideration factors. The invention further includes an electronic monetary trading device to implement online ticket Sale Services. US’724’ is focussed on airline ticket booking whereas the present invention provides ticket booking or payments for multi-modal public and private transportation including roadways, railways, airways and waterways. US20060184314 discloses a multi-modal navigation system. The navigation system is multi-modal as it provides navigation information (including routes, maps, directions, and navigation instructions) for a plurality of transportation modes including, but not limited to, automobiles, pedestrian walking, trains, Subways, and the like. The multi-modal navigation system may be embodied in integrated navigation devices, as stand-alone navigation systems on a variety of computing devices, as navigation service on a computing device or as a Web service, and the like. The multi-modal navigation system includes route data for a plurality of transportation modes. Route data for the plurality of transportation modes may be integrated, may be separately available, or any combination thereof. US’314’ provides navigation and route suggestions for multi-modal transportation whereas the present invention allows booking facility for multi-modal multi-route public and private transportation apart from navigation.

US20150127433 presents an embodiment which provides methods and systems for providing discounts on basic price of services and/or products, wherein the method comprises allowing a user to select and book at least a service and/or product using a user device, identifying position of the user and a destination of booked service and/or product are available, calculating a predetermined radius from the destination, wherein the predetermined radius is an origin, calculating“as-the-crow-flies” travel distance of the user towards the destination during the user travelling within the origin, applying discounts on basic price of the booked service and/or product, wherein the discounts are dynamically applied based on the travel distance to determine dynamic discounted price, allowing the user to avail the discounts for the booked service and/or product and allowing the user to make or authorize payment for the booked service and/or product. US’433’ is focussed on calculation of discounts depending on the user’s travel plan whereas the present invention focussed on booking and payment methods for multi-modal multi-route public and private transportation.

US20170091677 discloses a method of allocating a set of bookings to a set of vehicles, comprising determining a cost associated with all combinations of booking in dependence on an overall cost of booking/vehicle combinations being the lowest. US’677’ is focussed on multi-booking multi-modal lowest cost calculations whereas the present invention is focussed on multi-modal multi-route under a single booking method and its payment using services of third party transportation service provider.

US201703301 11 discloses a computing system for enabling a traveler to reserve a ride, the computing system comprising at least one computer-readable medium, having instructions encoded thereon and at least one computer processor, programmed via the instructions to receive first input from the traveller defining a pick-up location at which the traveller is to be picked up to commence the ride; receive second input from the traveller defining a destination location at which the traveller is to be dropped off to conclude the ride; receive third input from the traveller enabling a pick-up time to be determine for the ride and based at least in part upon the first, second and third inputs received from the traveller, automatically identify a first transportation provider affiliated with a first ridesharing service, to provide the ride to the traveller, wherein the first ridesharing service does not allow travelers to reserve rides more than a predetermined amount of time before a ride commences and wherein the first, second and third inputs are received more than the predetermined amount of time prior to the ride commencing. US’111’ is focussed on restricted number of shared rides where system books the share ride automatically based on first available transportation service provider available whereas in the present invention, the system provides facility to book the multi-modal ride manually without having any restriction of number of trips taken to reach the destination from the point of origin.

US20180107950 discloses methods, computer program products and systems are presented. The methods include, for instance: a travel planning system, via a user interface, receives requirements for a trip, searches available travel options based on the requirements and the preference information; builds an itinerary based on the searched travel options by use of a balance combination of relative weights for sources of the preference information; applies external data relevant to the itinerary; obtains a response to the itinerary from the user and either adjusts the itinerary or makes reservations respective to the travel options in the itinerary, depending on types of a response from the user. US’950’ is focussed on intelligent itinerary planning and booking system using additional external data such as whether conditions etc whereas the present invention is focussed on multi-modal multi-route public and private transportation, booking and payment system automatically as well as manually.

US20180293522 discloses a travel booking system abstracts the user from a travel search of web and internet searches initiated by the user and the search result of those searches to present the user with a consistent interface for both entry and results. As part of the abstraction the search introduces elements of one or more traveller profiles to delineate the searches. The user may investigate the search results for a trip or alternate route options returned by a search to further direct the search or to book a search result and when a booked itinerary is returned may load this to a traveller’s device together with other assistance for phases of the trip.

US’522’ provides multi-route search results based on traveller’s search input where an itinerary is compiled and loaded into the traveller’s device based on the route taken by the traveller. Whereas the present invention provides solution for booking and payment method for multi-modal multi-route public and private transportation using third party transportation service provider.

W02013014612 discloses a method, system, computer program product and computer program for generating a multi-modal journey itinerary comprising the steps of: receiving, from a user, a desired destination, determining the user's current location, determining the user's current mode of transport, accessing a multi-model route graph, determining, in response to the steps of determining the user's current location and of determining the user's current mode of transport, a user's position in the multi-modal route graph, and calculating, in response to determining the user's position in the multi-modal route graph, a multi-modal journey itinerary from the user's position in the multi-modal route graph to the desired destination.

US’622’ provides multi-modal multi-route itinerary whereas the present invention provides booking and payment facility for multi-modal multi-route journey itinerary using third party transportation services into a single journey.

WO2018009914 discloses a systems, apparatus, and methods for implementing multi-modal transport transform generalized transport objectives for a segment of a journey from an origin to destination (e.g., as specified by a traveller or shipper) into generalized and specific transport requests to various sources/providers of transport services (e.g. operators, platforms and marketplaces) across different modes of transport. In one example, generalized and specific itineraries received from various sources/providers of transport services are managed to meet objectives, and are requested iteratively over time, up to the day of transport, to seek improvements toward meeting transport objectives. In another example, real-time monitoring of different legs of a journey across a transport segment leverages flexibility and addresses changeability options. In other aspects, the flexibility afforded by generalized transport requests and a generalized itinerary allows providers of transport services to significantly improve matching of capacity to demand for the transport services. US’914’ provides a method to transform the itinerary into generalized and specific multi-modal transport request for a segment of a journey whereas the present invention provides method for multi-modal multi-route public and private transportation booking and payment using third part transportation services.

From the above prior arts, it can be seen that the systems were either designed for navigation only or multi-modal transport of commuters’ only or smart booking system only. The system of the aforesaid prior art does not solve the problems related to distribution and collection of payments in multimodal transport. These systems do not suggest the manual trip planner using multimodal transportation with the shortest route shown by the navigation system. All these systems do not suggest integration of available services of private as well as public transportation into a single unified service. None of the above mentioned systems (Prior art 1 to 10) provide solution regarding cancellation charges when the trip or sub-trip of a single trip is cancelled. None of the above mentioned systems provides a solution for having number of application systems on a single mobile handset and its related problems such as efficiency and power requirement. None of the above mentioned systems provide integrated solution for cheapest, preferred, shortest or direct route management system or method. None of the above mentioned systems discloses the scheduling of vehicles for the multimodal trip carried out by the commuter.

OBJECT OF THE INVENTION

It is an object of the invention to overcome the drawbacks related to the prior arts and provide a single unified platform to all the available transportation services with enhanced feature of real time multimodal multi-route economical transport with scheduling of vehicles and payment facility.

It is yet another object of the invention is to provide single unified method system to handle the public and private transportation simultaneously by integrating the available and existing public and private transportation systems. It is another object of the present invention to provide a communication network supports communication as needed between user equipments, servers, devices, systems, and components supported by the system.

It is yet another object of the invention to minimize the use memory and processing load on devices and increase its efficiency.

It is yet another objective of the invention is to provide travelling option and payment facility for real time multimodal multi route transportation. It is yet another objective of the present invention is to provide management of collection and distribution of payouts in multimodal multi route transportation.

It is yet another objective of the present invention is to handle the problem related to cancellation of sub-trip from a single trip where cancellation charges are required to pay.

It is yet further objective of the present invention is to avail the facility to take up a trip manually, also for the private transport vehicle standing idle in the line of sight.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Accordingly there is provided a method and system for real time multimodal multi route transportation using public and private transport services. The disclosed system and method is configured to provide suggestion for cheapest, shortest and less crowded routes with the help of service provider tools (public and private transporter), GPS tools and navigation and tracking system. It also suggests vehicles that can be used for the trip by breaking the trip into sub-trips of two or more. In an exemplary embodiment, the trip is scheduled automatically considering one of the routes suggested by the system (GPS) or commuter can give his/her own choice of route. The commuter may choose only one vehicle or all the vehicles associated with the trip manually. After finishing ongoing sub-trip and before starting next sub trip, the commuter may cancel the rest part of the journey.

Therefore in an embodiment, it would be desirable to provide a method and system that can coordinate scheduling of different modes of transportation (public and private) to transport of a commuter between a starting location and a destination location. For example, a system that can coordinate travel over a route using a private service provider’s transport and a public transport would be highly desirable. Using different categories of vehicles available with public and private service providers to transport commuters as part of such a system would be ideal since they could be used to transport commuters over certain legs of a route between other modes of transport. At the same time, in an embodiment the disclosed method and system is configured to automatically adjust travel scheduling when the commuter's travel plan changes during travel.

In another exemplary embodiment, the disclosed method and system is adapted for creating enquiry for ride (private) by providing registration number of vehicle and thereby initiating a request to the service provider for allowing rides. Herein the ride request query from commuter includes vehicular registration Number

The trip from source to destination which is divided into more than two sub-trips including public and private service providers has a scheduling system where vehicle for next sub-trip is not scheduled till the end of the current ongoing sub-trip. Once the current sub-trip ends, the payment is made towards that part of the journey using cash, cards, wallets or Unified Payment Interfaces. After receiving the payment, vehicle or ticket for next sub-trip is scheduled and so on for number of sub-trips taken into a single trip from source to destination.

When the payment is received using cashless means of payment, the system initiates disbursement as per the policy of transportation service provider. In case of cash payment, when the driver receives the cash, he enters the receipt into the system after which the system initiates disbursement as per the policy of transportation service provider’s account. In case of cash payment for public transport, the system reserves the ticket and sends a OTP on the user’s mobile. When the user shares his/her OTP with the ticket distributor and makes the payment, the reserved ticket becomes confirmed.

In another embodiment, the disclosed method and system integrates existing transportation service provider’s application into the invented unified system and uses their transportation and disburse payment as per policy of service provider.

The integration of all the available transportation service providers does not use its own resources for its operation. All these existing transportation service providers uses the resources of the method and system and contributes in saving Random Access Memory, processing time, power and data requirement.. The number of service providers both private and public are integrated into the disclosed unified system does not change the size of Random Access Memory, power usage and internet.

In accordance with these and other objects which will become apparent hereinafter, the instant invention will now be described with particular reference to the accompanying drawing.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS:

Figure 1 illustrates a Layered diagram of the entire interfacing system in accordance with the present invention in which

1. Hardware layer

2. Device Driver and subsystem layer

3. System modules

4. Available integrated transportation service applications (4.1 , 4.2, 4.3, . ,

4.n)

Figure 2 illustrates number of transportation applications on system with its respective resources in accordance with the present invention in which

5. Internet bandwidth used in respective applications (1 ,2, ....n)

6. Database used in the respective applications (1 ,2, ....n)

7. Server used by respective applications (1 ,2....n)

8. Random Access Memory used by each of the application (1 ,2, ... n)

9. Transportation applications (1 ,2, ....n)

10. Amount of power in milli-Ampere Hour used by each application (1 ,2, ... n)

11. Mobile Computing Device

Figure 3 illustrates an existing transportation system having multiple transportation applications on a single mobile computing device.

12. Driver’s mobile computing device having Global position Satellite tools, Random Access Memory and internet from transportation service provider 1 (1.2,...n) 13. Driver’s mobile computing device having Global position Satellite tools, Random Access Memory and internet from transportation service provider 2 (1.2,...n)

14. Driver’s mobile computing device having Global position Satellite tools, Random Access Memory and internet from transportation service provider n(1.2,...n)

15. Driver application for transportation service provider 1 (1 ,2,...n)

16. Driver application for transportation service provider 2 (1 ,2,...n)

17. Driver application for transportation service provider n (1 ,2,...n) 18. Server of public and private service providers (1 ,2,...n)

19. User Application for transportation service provider 1 (1.2,...n)

20. User Application for transportation service provider 2 (1 2,...n)

21. User Application for transportation service provider n (1 2,...n)

22. User’s mobile computing device having Global position Satellite tools, Random Access Memory and internet (1 ,2,...,n)

Figure 4 illustrates an unified Interface system for public and private transportation in which :

23. Driver’s mobile computing device having Global position Satellite tools, Random Access Memory and internet from transportation service provider 1

(1.2,...n)

24. Driver’s mobile computing device having Global position Satellite tools, Random Access Memory and internet from transportation service provider 2 (1.2,...n) 25. Driver’s mobile computing device having Global position Satellite tools,

Random Access Memory and internet from transportation service provider n(1.2,...n) 26. Driver application for transportation service provider 1 (1 ,2,...n)

27. Driver application for transportation service provider 2 (1 ,2,...n)

28. Driver application for transportation service provider n (1 ,2,...n)

29. Server of public and private service providers (1 ,2,...n) 30. Application Programmable Interface of service providers (1 ,2,...,n)

31. Remote server having executable modules and database

32. Interface Module

33. Vehicle scheduling Module

34. Payment 35. Navigation and Tracking Module

36. Database

37. Invented User interface application^ ,2,....,n)

38. User’s mobile Computing devices (1 ,2,...,n)

Figure 5 illustrates a real-time multimodal multi route transportation using 3 different modes of transport in accordance with the present invention in which

39. First sub-trip from source to mass transportation station

40. Second sub-trip by mass transportation

41. Third trip from mass transportation destination station to final destination

42. Source to destination, entire trip. Figure 6 illustrates the integration of available public and private transportation applications / services into single application in accordance with the present invention in which

43. Transportation Application 1

44. Transportation Application 2

45. Transportation Application n

46. Graphical user interface of Unified Interface system 47. Random Access Memory

48. Database

49. Remote server

50. Internet

51. Power

52. Mobile computing device having global positioning satellite tools, internet and random access memory.

Other objects, features and advantages of the inventions will be apparent from the following detailed description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings of the inventions.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION: According to above mentioned prior arts, the invention is related to trip planner and itineraries and does not talk about scheduling the vehicles and payments. The major reason being, these prior art multimodal multi route systems not providing scheduling system is that they do not have a systematic method for the collection and distribution of charges incurred during a trip.

Apart from above mentioned problem, any application based system for transportation service requires Random Access Memory, internet and power. Even in case of idle condition, all these three parameters are consumed. That means Random Access Memory is occupied and internet is continuously functioning resulting in draining the power of the mobile handset. Mobile computing device having more number of applications discharge fast.

With reference to FIG. 4 there is shown a hardware and network level overview of the present disclosure. The system herein has a network which interconnects a plurality of mobile devices. It should be noted that mobile devices are examples only and user may communicate centrally to the said system using a computer, a land line telephone, a tablet, or any other type of user terminal. The network may be any type of cellular network, including but not limited to 3G, 3GPP, 4G/LTE, 5G or any other cellular networks in existence or to be developed in the future. The network may also include WiFi, WiMax, or LAN interfaces and may also include interfaces to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). When implemented as part of a cellular network, the disclosed system may take advantage of other features of the cellular network described in more detail below with respect to FIGS 1 and 4 but include provisioning systems, location servers, SMS and MMS systems, emergency alerts, and the like.

Also, when such said system and method are working, it carries its own database, server system, Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) resources for navigation and tracking, scheduling and payment processes.

When more than one such operation are available on a single computing device, all these parameters get multiplied by the number of applications (Figure 2) which overloads the said device and makes it slow.

The present invention is designed to minimize the usage of Random Access Memory, internet and power saver, along with homogenous integration of the existing public and private transportation system facilitating with scheduling the plurality of vehicles according to itinerary. The invention also provides optimized multimodal, multi route transportation working in automatic and manual mode.

Private transportation cab and autorickshaw service applications do not have facility for reserving and scheduling metro/bus ticket. These applications are made and focused for only private mode of transportation. The private transportation is carried out by plurality of vehicles such as cars (taxis), e-rickshaw and autorickshaw. These applications use only one mode of transportation, that is, for example, if a commuter schedules a vehicle through these applications, a single vehicle is allotted from source to destination. These application systems do not show multi route, so commuter has to follow the single route specified by it. It shows changed route only if the commuter or the driver takes another route he knows.

The present invention is a systematic method referred as an intelligent unified interface application. The present invented application not only interfaces the locally available public and private transportation services using the hardware and software components but it also gives a unique result in the form of multimodal multi route and economical booking system consuming less Random Access Memory, less power and internet than the existing transportation service applications.

The present invention is an intelligent system and not a computer program per se. This system makes use of hardware components, device drivers and subsystems to integrate locally available private and public transportation service including metro, city bus and all mass transportation applications to make use of their services through a common platform.

The method and the system for multi modal, multi-route public and private transportation of commuter including

a) receiving a commuter request from a mobile device for a real time public - private transportation reservation with predefined start and destination location and a plurality of stop over;

b) transferring the commuter request to a plurality of public and private transport service providers and receiving a real time availability and price quote from the said transport service providers;

c) providing the commuter all the real time public private service provider availability and price quote;

d) allocating at least one resource to accommodate the reservation for start location and first stop over;

e) monitoring the location of the said mobile device associated with a pre registered user requesting the reservation as the user uses the at least one resource; and

f) releasing the at least one resource when the location of the mobile device indicates the termination of journey from commuter or first stop over location is reached or at least said one resource is no longer needed;

g) settling the payment receipt with the service provider for the said one resource;

h) transferring from the commuter an automated second request in real time to a plurality of public and private transport service providers and receiving a real time availability and price quote from the said transport service providers for second stop-over location;

j) providing the commuter all the real time public private service provider availability and price quote for the said second request;

k) allocating at least a second resource to accommodate the reservation from first stop over location to a second stop over location;

I) monitoring the location of the said mobile device associated as the user uses the at least second resource; and

m) releasing the at least one resource when the location of the mobile device indicates the termination of journey from commuter or second stop over location is reached or at least said second resource is no longer needed;

n) settling the payment receipt with the service provider for the said second resource;

o) repeating steps (b) to (g) till the destination is reached.

The mobile device is associated with a commuter.

The method may include having a plurality of resources from public and private service provider of transportation and the allocating step allocates at least one of the pluralities of resources automatically or as per the desire of the commuter. As an alternative, the at least one resource is selected by the user and an alternative resource is suggested. The selection may include providing a resource registration number and or type of resource. The alternative resource may then be accepted and the reservation updated to include the alternative resource. Under condition that the commuter provides a vehicle registration number, a request is generated from the system for a preferable allocation of such resource and to the serving service provider for a preferential allocation of that particular resource with other available resources.

The reservation may be modified to include at least one new resource based on receiving an external input wherein the external input is related to one of an event, another transportation schedule, and the unavailability of the at least one resource. The method may further comprise generating a list of route options wherein one of the route options is a premium route option and the system receives an acceptance of the premium route and then assesses a charge for the premium route. The disclosure also relates to a system server having a processor, and a memory coupled with the processor, the memory having stored thereon instructions that when executed by the processor cause the processor to effectuate operations that Implement the method steps described above. The step of allocating at least a resource from a plurality of service provider for transport in order to accommodate the reservation includes providing a reservation allocation till first stop over.

The present invented system comprises of four layers (Figure 1 ).

First Layer is the hardware layer (1 ) comprising of Global Positioning Satellite tools, Random Access Memory, remote server.

Second Layer is the device driver and subsystem layer (2) comprising of navigation and tracking system, database, payment systems and methods and scheduling the plurality of vehicles according to the itinerary system.

Third Layer is the system module layer (3) having a processing unit and service modules which manages the tasks mentioned below:

1 ) Handling plurality of vehicles,

2) Handling plurality of routes,

3) Scheduling,

4) payments,

5) Add/delete local transportation services such as cab services, metro services and bus services,

6) Automatic/manual trip managing services

7) Communication system

Fourth Layer is the layer having access gateway to avail services from plurality of transport services from third party service providers. The fourth layer of Application Programming Interface integrates through the interface (3 ^rd layer) with the main program running on the server (1 ^st Layer) (Figure 3).

Apart from integration of all available transportation services, the system enhances the services and avail multimodal multi-route economical features which cannot be seen in any of the individual existing transportation service.

The system uses the vehicle services of locally operating transportation service providers, for plurality of modes of travel using plurality of categorized routes for economical transport. The invented system has its own set of resources such as remote server, database, Random Access Memory, Global Positioning Satellite tools, navigation and tracking system, scheduling/rescheduling system and payment system and does not depend upon resources of the available transport services. The present invention shows plurality of routes using plurality of vehicles which are divided into below mentioned categories

1 ) Cheapest Route from source to destination

2) Shortest Route from source to destination

3) Less crowded route from source to destination

4) Plurality of options for travel plan according to plurality of routes depends on the type of route selection (that is, cheapest, shortest or less crowded), distance between source and destination and availability of vehicles including metro and buses. Selection of type of vehicles that are included into a single trip has different set of permutation combination according to the distance from source to destination, routes taken and availability of vehicles at real time. The system decides the set of vehicles according to the choice made by the commuter. If commuter wishes, the type of vehicle could be changed manually as per commuter’s choice before scheduling the trip.

The invented interfacing application system does not have its own fleet of vehicles of any type. It uses the vehicles of the private and public transportation service provider integrated into it including metro, city buses and any other mass transportation services. The integration of the existing transportation service applications is achieved by using Application Programming Interface (API) of the existing applications. This feature of the invented system contributes towards green and clean environment since it does not engage a separate fleet of vehicles through new purchases.

With reference to figure 2, all existing transportation service provider uses its own server (7), database (6), navigation system (not shown), and scheduling and payment methods (not shown). It is obvious that when these transportation servers are integrated into a single service system, they will get integrated along with their server, database, navigation and booking and payment methods. This is quite difficult to manage and it makes resource hungry integration.

In the present invented system, the integration is done in such a way that the invented system integrates only transportation services part of the existing services but uses its own server, database, navigation system and scheduling and payment methods. This integration plays a major role in service management and resource management. The number of transportation applications on a single computing could vary from one to many but the integration of all these applications into the invented system always have only one set of resources.

In an embodiment, the disclosed system is also configured for evaluating fares over multiple rides for a journey involving multi modal, multi-route public and private transportation of commuter served by multiple service providers. The system includes a network interface for communicating over a network and a processor. The said processor is configured to perform actions that include inputting a starting address and a destination address and the plurality of stopover in a journey during which a commuter accesses at least one transport service provider from a plurality of Transport service providers during two or more journey segments. The processor is configured to identify a start point and an end point for each journey segment using the GPS of the commuter and / or service provider. The journey directions / route is then determined / identified that afford access to at least one transport service provider during each journey segment with each segment being served by a different and / or same transport service provider. The cumulative fares for the different service providers for the journey segments is calculated for the service providers during the journey, and for each journey segment, the cumulative fare is displayed in real time with at least one of textual descriptions and GPS descriptions of the transport service providers route and travel directions. The processor can include one medium or plural media (GUI) such as separate structures. Any method that carries out the steps and functions described herein can be stored on a non transitory medium. A program that maybe recorded on a memory medium can, when executed, perform one or more steps of the functions described herein without any deference to sequence.

The existing transportation service has an individual remote server (18) of the respective transportation service provider which controls and manages the transportation applications (15, 16, 17) on driver’s mobile computing device (12, 13, 14)as well as user applications (19, 20, 21 ) on user’s mobile computing devices (22). If a user has more than one transportation applications then the mobile computing device of a user consumes more random access memory and internet since all these user applications works in the background simultaneously and independently. This process drains the power of the mobile computing device. In the present invention, the system is designed in such a way that the driver side system and application remains unchanged for all transportation service providers. Whereas, all the user side applications is unified into a single application resulting in multi-modal-multi-route transportation service featuring scheduling and payment through a remote server based executable modules which has access to the available remote server through Application Programming Interface as discussed above. All necessary and required functioning of the transportation service is managed at the remote server. This reduces or eliminates the background work of the user application on the user’s mobile computing device which results in saving memory space, internet bandwidth and power.

The intelligent unified interfacing system comprises of a remote server (31 ) where executable modules viz. interfacing module (32), scheduling (33) and payment (34) module, navigation and tracking module (35) and database (36) are stored. This remote server (31 ) has access to the individual remote servers (29) of the transportation service providers through individual Application Programming Interface (30) of the transportation service provider application system. The individual remote servers (29) of the respective transportation service providers control and manage the applications (26, 27, 28) installed on driver’s mobile computing device (23, 24, 25). The remote server (31 ) controls and manages the user application (37) on user’s mobile computing device (38). User need not have to install all the available applications related to the transportation services to avail the services from the respective transportation services. The executable interfacing module (32) scans and locates the locally available private and public transportation and integrates the Application Programming Interfaces of respective individual locally available private and public transportation. It uses the global positioning satellite tools for locating the user’s position and the city/ state/country he/she is in. This step is necessary since the intelligent unified interfacing system uses the mode of public and private transportation services which are locally available.

The interfacing module (32) also communicates with the user application on the mobile computing device (38) over internet through Graphical User Interface (46). The global positioning satellite tools are used for navigating and tracking the user in real time. The coordinates of the user’s location and the destination he/she inputs into the graphical user interface (46) is used for computing multi-modal-multi-route trip for the user. The entire computation process is carried at the remote server (31 ) by the executable modules. The required database (36) is created and updated at the remote server (31 ). This database contains information and history of user’s accounts, date and time-wise report on trips and mode of transport(s) used and payments. It also has information related to vehicle and driver details from various service providers used in the trip. It also has a record of trip cancellation. The invented unified system uses global positioning satellite tools through graphical user interface of the user application, whereas all the computations, scheduling of itinerary through public and or private transportation, splitting the trip into sub-trips, allotting multi-modal transportation over multi-route between source and destination, payment management and cancellation of trip(s) or sub-trip(s) and navigation and tracking of the user as well as driver (through individual remote server access) are carried at the remote server (31 ) through the executable modules on user’s request for the trip(s).

The different features and embodiments of the invented system is mentioned below.

1. After receiving the current location of the user or the location provided by the user as point of origin of the trip, the system notes the time after receiving the user request.

2. Is registration number of a vehicle entered? If yes, locate the vehicleand calculate the distance between the point of origin and the vehicle parked.

3. If the distance is less than 100 meters, sends a request to the driver of the vehicle.

4. If the name of destination is entered, first, number of available routes between point of origin and destination are checked.

5. Availability of public transportation such as metro or bus is checked for that route that is connecting point of origin and destination.

6. If public transportation is available, then its arrival and departure time is noted.

7. Depending on the arrival and departure time of the metro or bus, time difference between real time and the arrival time of metro or bus is calculated.

8. Depending on the time left for arrival of the metro or bus, decision is taken for that route, whether to opt for metro or bus, or not.

9. If metro/bus is opted, then distance between point of origin and source metro station or bus stand is calculated.

10. If the arrival time left for the metro/bus and the distance between origin and source metro station/bus stand is achievable then, time taken to reach the metro station, depending on the traffic condition is calculated considering speed of plurality of vehicles.

11. Time taken by metro/ bus to reach the destination metro station of bus stand is noted according to the time table of metro and/or bus.

12. Distance between destination metro station and destination of the trip is calculated.

13. Time taken by plurality of private transportation mode from point of origin and source metro station or bus stand is calculated considering the speed of respective private transportation mode (depending on traffic) and distance between point of origin and source metro station or bus stand on that route. 14. Time taken by plurality of private transportation mode from destination metro station and destination of the trip is calculated considering the speed of respective private transportation mode (depending on traffic) and distance between point of origin and source metro station or bus stand on that route. 15. Tariff of plurality of vehicles from point of origin to metro station/bus stand, tariff of metro/bus from source to destination station/stand, tariff of plurality of vehicles from station/stand to destination of trip is summed up separately for plurality of vehicles.

16. Total travel time from point of origin to destination is calculated for that route. 17. Step number 4 to step number 16 are repeated for plurality of routes.

18. Travel time and tariff calculated for plurality of vehicles on plurality of routes are compared to arrive at cheapest and shortest route.

19. Itinerary is generated.

20. If the itinerary is accepted by the user, then system searches for vehicles by scanning an area having radius of 100 meters from the point of origin and availability of the vehicles by plurality of service providers.

21. If vehicle is not available in the radius of 100 meters, search radius increases further by 50 meters till suitable vehicle is located

22. Once the suitable vehicle is found, the system sends a request to the driver of that vehicle.

23. The system tracks the journey from point of origin to destination.

24. On reaching the source metro station/bus stand, tariff is applied and the amount is transferred to the service provider after deducting the commission.

25. System reserves the ticket of metro/bus.

26. After completing the journey by metro/bus, system searches for availability of vehicles from different service providers.

27. Once the vehicle is located, the system sends a request to the driver of the vehicle.

28. After completing the journey by that vehicle, tariff is applied and the amount is transferred to the service provider.

The above system works for journey taken within a city, city to city, state to state and from country to country. For journey between state to state and country to country and other rest of the types of journey, the public transportation metro/city bus may be replaced by long distance trains, buses, flights and ships. The disclosed method and system is carried out on the remote server and the mobile handset sends coordinates of point of origin and destination to the remote server through geo-tag names used by electronic graphical maps. After the computation the results are sent to the mobile handset through internet where it is displayed on the handset screen.

Hence, the use of memory, power and data services is less on the mobile handset / user equipment.

Table 1 -4 gives the details of memory consumption, power consumption and internet consumption when the application installed is in idle state and in operational state. Moreover, the focus in on consumption of these parameters in idle condition of all the three services since the usage is simultaneous in idle condition whereas in active condition (during usage) only one application is used at a time. Although, from the tables, it can be seen that the consumption of RAM, power and internet is less than any of the individual service utilization on respective mobile computing devices.The tables provide data taken for three different transportation service provider applications installed on four different make of mobile computing devices.

The measured data from table 1 to table 8 have been taken by use of each of the handsets for five minutes and in idle mode for five minutes.

Tablel

Wherein,

Total RAM in use in idle condition = 133MB Total Power used in idle condition = 47.9mAH Total Internet used in idle condition = 2.3MB

Table 2

Wherein,

Total RAM in use in idle condition = 254MB Total Power used in idle condition = 1.1 imAH Total Internet used in idle condition = 0.87MB

Table 3

Wherein,

Total RAM in use in idle condition = 376MB Total Power used in idle condition = 1 2mAH Total Internet used in idle condition = 1.1 MB

Table 4

Wherein,

Total RAM in use in idle condition = 203MB

Total Power used in idle condition = 0.9mAH

Total Internet used in idle condition = 2.7MB

Unlike other mobile applications, the present interface system does not have to perform any background tasks such as updating or data backups which consume Random Access Memory, power and internet even in idle condition of the handset. The present invented system is active only when the user operates it for use and hence saves the Random Access Memory, power and internet.

The present invention integrates the other existing private and public transportation application and enhances the features to multi modal multi route economical rides. Applications of three service providers mentioned in table 1 to 4 are integrated into the invented system. After the integration, data has been collected showing usage of Random Access Memory, power and internet.

Random Access Memory, power and internet used by the present invention after integration of these three applications is mention in table 5 to table 8 (data measured by operating the handsets for five minutes and also in 5 minutes idle condition).

Table 5

Table 6

Table 7

Table 8

Table 9: The comparison table From the comparison table (table 9), percentage of RAM, power and internet saved is shown in table 10

Table 10

It is worth to note that all the three applications (service providers 1 ,2 and 3) individually consuming Random Access Memory, data service and power is more than consumption of Random Access Memory, power and internet after their integration into the interface. The present disclosure suggests and generates itinerary and schedules plurality of vehicles from a plurality of transport service providers on plurality of routes including a plurality of optional stopovers, providing options for cheapest, shortest and less crowded routes. The plurality of vehicles includes metro, buses, trains, flights and ships. The system integrates the existing transportation service provider application which comes with its own set of resources; hence the resources get multiplied with the number of application integrated. Logically, in such case, the existing system should use more Random Access Memory, drain more power and internet usage is increased. Also the invented system has more number of features than the existing individual application.

Despite of having all the features, the consumption of Random Access Memory, power and internet is less than the existing individual transportation application (Table 9). Even though all the available transportation service applications are integrated into the invented interface system application, the size of Random Access Memory, internet usage and power consumption does not change. The integration is achieved by sending commands and receiving response from the existing transportation service applications using Application Programming Interface (API) of the service provider system. Hence, only that part of the existing applications is communicated (not installed) using APIs which provides access to the central processing unit of the existing applications responsible for rendering the transportation services.

Features of the system are mentioned below:

• Commuter could choose to travel by a single mode of transport from source to destination. Also, the commuter can specify the service provider of his/her choice for the journey taken by him/her.

• Commuter could take up a trip by plurality of routes, sub-trips and plurality of vehicles suggested by the system application or he/she could manually enter the sub-trips and vehicles.

• Commuter could opt a vehicle standing nearby for his/her journey by entering the vehicle registration number into the system application.

• Commuter can cancel the trip in midway after the on-going journey finishes and before taking up next part of the journey. In such case, the system will not book the next part of journey and hence cancellation charges are totally avoided which saves money.

• Commuter can pre-plan a journey with alarm. So that he/she she could get the proper chain of vehicles to take up a journey.

Payment collection and Distribution process:

With reference to the points 24, 25 and 28 from above disclosed method is configured for , a plurality of modes of payments such as cash, cards, net banking, e-wallets and Unified Payment Interfaces.

The algorithm for collection and distribution of tariff is mentioned below:

1 ) Is the payment in cash? If yes, the amount paid by the commuter is collected by the driver and when the driver enters the payment receipt into the system, the amount gets credited to the transportation service provider’s account as uncleared amount till the settlement of cash with driver as per the service provider’s policy. 2) Is the payment in cash and journey by metro/bus? If yes, the ticket is reserved by the system and it sends a One Time Password (OTP) on the commuter’s mobile number.

3) When the commuter shares the OTP with the ticket distributor and pays the charges for that ticket in cash, the ticket gets confirmed for that part of the journey by metro/bus.

4) Is the payment is electronically? If yes, the amount is deducted from the commuter’s card or wallet or Unified Payment Interface and gives confirmed ticket.

Working of the System:

With reference to figure 4, the disclosed system is installed on the user equipment of the user. This invented system makes use of Global Positioning Satellite tools of the user equipment through which it locates and tracks the user journey. The coordinates of point of origin, plurality of stop over and destination as located by the system on user equipment is communicated to the remote server through network for processing. The remote server has navigation and tracking modules, database, vehicle scheduling and payment module and integration and interfacing module to access servers of third party transportation service providers through Application Programming Interfaces (API). After receiving the inputs from user, the itinerary is generated. After receiving confirmation from the user, or the user generated itinerary is to be executed, the details of route taken along with point of origin and destination are send to the driver of the scheduled vehicle over network. The request is received and confirmed by the driver and the information is displayed on the screen of driver’s equipment.

During operation, the system locates the coordinates of the user to the remote server for processing. User can also change its coordinates and make a different place as the point of origin. When the user enters the address of the destination / stop over, the coordinates of destination are located and sent to the remote server with current date and time. Using these two coordinates the remote server identifies the plurality of routes connecting point of origin and destination and process the information given in the form of coordinates as per the method mentioned above. The database is used to maintain the user profile, travel logs and itineraries / routes / usage of a user with date and time along with details of each journey.

The said method can be executed only after receiving the types of inputs from the user through the API’s of the user equipment. The types of inputs are mentioned below:

1 ) Coordinates of point of origin and destination,

2) Selection of shortest/cheapest/less crowded route,

3) Overriding the itinerary which is generated by the system automatically and creating manual itinerary using plurality of modes of vehicle,

4) Sending the registration number of the vehicle to be used.

The API on the user’s equipment serves as man machine interface whereas execution of the modules, database management, navigation and tracking, generation of itinerary takes place at the remote server. This system in turn, saves Random Access Memory, power consumption and internet on user’s mobile handset.

Advantages

1 ) The disclosed system and the method is a single solution to all types of transportation service existing in India, since it integrates all available transportation service (public and private) applications in that particular city/state/country;

2) The service provider of the present application does not have to buy new vehicles to provide transportation service, rather uses vehicles of the existing service providers and hence helps in reducing pollution and contributes towards traffic management;

3) Utilizes and encourages commuters for the use of public transport such as metros and buses, which is another step in reducing the pollution and contributing towards traffic management;

4) The multimodal trip could be cancelled in the midway of the journey without paying cancellation charges;

5) Integration of different transportation services saves surcharges, waiting time.

Travel time and hence it is a very economical way of planning a trip and taking up the journey using the invented application; 6) User need not have to install all applications of the transportation system. Through this interface, the user automatically gets all the transportation services at his/her fingertips;

7) The interfacing system is applicable to all the available modes of transportation viz roadways, railways, airways and waterways; and

8) The system is applicable for the transport of goods with the same features.

9) In automatic mode, the journey is possible with a single click where transportation and payment is taken care by the system; Although the foregoing description of the present invention has been shown and described with reference to particular embodiments and applications thereof, it has been presented for purposes of illustration by way of examples and description and is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the particular embodiments and applications disclosed. The particular embodiments and applications were chosen and described to provide the best illustration of the principles of the invention and its practical application to thereby enable one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize the invention in various embodiments and with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated. All such changes, modifications, variations, and alterations should therefore be seen as being within the scope of the present invention as determined by the appended claims when interpreted in accordance with the breadth to which they are fairly, legally, and equitably entitled.