Information System for G-train

The article discusses the implementation of Digital Seat Availability Display Board in G-Link trains to increase convenience for passengers. It provides insights on the Gold Coast public transport system and Porter's competitive force model analysis for the public transport. The article also highlights the problems in the existing HAS of the transport system and the stakeholders involved.

Information System for G-train
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Executive Summary
The G-Link has developed a lot over time. There are many technologies
that are implemented to give the passengers with an optimized services.
Still there are certain new technologies that can be implemented so that
the convenience of the G-Link technology can increase. Hence, the Digital
Seat Availability Display Board is implemented, such that the people can
see the available seats in the system and get to the right compartment or
the compartment having seats.
Keywords: G-Link, Light railways, Digital Display board.
1. Introduction:
Queensland Railway has G-Trains that needs some improvement in its’ human
activity system as it is facing certain issues in the system. As a trainee business
analyst I would like to suggest a new information system (Laudon and Laudon, 2016)
consisting of a digital board which can be set outside each compartment of the train
to show them the availability of the seats in that particular compartment. The
passengers will be able to find out everything regarding the seats available, for
example, the position of the seats. This will be efficient for the passengers as they
can see the availability and decide whether to get into the compartment or take the
next train or go to their respective station with other mode of conveyance.
2. Public transport of Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia:
The Gold Coast situated in Australia consists of four types of public transport
systems namely, Buses, Light rails Airports, and Heavy rails. These transport system
are controlled and monitored by TransLink, Department of Transport and Main Road
in Gold Coast, Queensland. Zoning, integrated ticketing and coordination is
managed by the department of transport too along with the Queensland Rail, Keolis
Downer and Surfside Bus lines (Melville et al., 2015). There are certain facilities
that are provided by the TransLink for the regular passengers, like introduction of
the Go cards which are smart cards which are cost efficient and time saving as a
person do not have to stand in line to purchase tickets. They can just recharge their
smart cards and each journey gets deducted from the smart card balance. Though
there are paper tickets available, majority prefers go card. These cards can be used
everywhere. The buses are available too, and can be used since 5 am in the morning
till the mid night. The buses are operated by the Surfside Bus-lines (Curley et al.,
2015). The Queensland services are operated by the Translink. 24 hour services are
also provided occasionally (Yen et al, 2015).
Assignment Report – 1410ICT or 7610ICT (omit one)
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As the city is situated near Brisbane, it is included in the City trains of the
Brisbane as it runs south bound. The heavy rail services stops at all the stations in
the gold coast after crossing Been Leigh, till which it generally do not stop and runs
like an express train (Tilly, 2015).
The city of the Gold Coast is considered as one of the fastest developing city of
Australia (Hale and Miller, 2013). With an increase in population, there is an
immediate need of congestion control in the city. Hence, the 20 km light railway
services are provided in the gold coast. The service is operated by the GLink and
opened for the public on the year 2014. The journey is enrooted from South
Broadbeach to Helensvale. It is a high frequency transport system. The light rails
provide efficient services. In the peak hours, there are trains arriving at an interval
of 8 minutes. And in normal hours, the interval is 15 minutes. The Glink is planning
on extending the services further as this is meant to attract more people towards it
to reduce congestions (Michell, Martin, and Laird, 2014). Apart from these, there
are airports connecting the city with the rest of the country.
The government declared that there are almost 10 million passengers in
February 2016 with an average of four thousand people boarding per day. There are
19 station in total and there is one line connecting them all (Kaewunruen, Ishida and
Remennikov, 2016). With lesser use of private transport and more usage of the
public transport, the congestion can be controlled.
2.1 Train operation in Gold Coast
Public transport or mass transport is the transportation operated by the
government. It is preferable to take the public mass transport as it reduces congestion
and environmental pollution. The buses, trains and light railways has benefited the Gold
Coast citizens a lot. GLink, the light railway service provider of Gold Coast has an
average speed of the 17 mph and top speed of 43 mph. at present there are 18 both
ways trams. The main strategy is to reduce congestion and increase the good conduct of
the city. This has been fulfilled up to a certain extend (Mandal, 2014). The Trans Link is
planning to extend the G-Link services further so that more commuters can avail the
light railways. This in turn benefits the government as the development fund gets raised
when the people avail public transport (Irannezhad, Mousavi and Hickman, 2015).
The increased number of licensed vehicles in the city increases the pollution
level. Using public transport reduces that up to a great extent. Apart from the G Link
there are heavy railways in Gold Coast. These heavy rails connects the city with
Brisbane. This almost runs as Express trains until it reaches Been Leigh, where is part
ways and stops at almost all the stations of Gold Coast. With introduction of the Smart
cards, the services have become more efficient and less time consuming.
2.2 The Mintzberg’s Classification
There are certain organizational forms in the Mintzberg’s Classification. They
are entrepreneurial organization, machine organization, professional, divisional and
innovative organizational structures. No organization is completely correct, Mintzberg
delivers and idea of the different possible classifications of the organizations. Thus the
organizational needs are considered and the structure is analyzed.
In this case, professional organization is considered. Here, the technology has to
be designed by highly trained professionals who prefers to have complete control over
the work or the part of the job they are doing. Decentralized decision making is one of
the complex problem in these organizational structure but there are certain works that
has to be done by only the professionals. To design a digital board, knowledgeable
personnel’s are needed (Perin et al., 2016). Technicians, developers, and IT experts
have to be present during the development of the new device. Though it is professional
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organization the supporting staffs follows the machine organizational structure, as they
ultimately let the higher officials decide the controls of the system (Stanton et al.,
2014).
2.3 porter’s value chain model:
The primary task of the Gold Coast Light railways is transport and services. The main
focus of the company lies within the transport operation, sales of tickets and marketing.
Operations helps in transformation of the inputs provided to the system to the output.
This is the main part of the business to develop a system that is able to deliver smooth
and high quality transportation to the passengers. The primary requirements that a
business needs to fulfill is the achieving a positive response from the people, that is, the
people are willing to avail the GLink train services over the other mass public
transportations. If the people a willing to use the GLink instead of others, there is
significant betterment in the marketing and sales sector. Another important aspect of
the Value chain model is communication. The Communication system of the GLink has
improved over time. The updated customer details are stored and readily available with
the employees. This not only helps the whole system of the GLink services, but also with
the help of optimization in those communication system a smooth and effective
communication system has been established.
2.4 Porter’s competitive force model analysis for the public
transport
Analyzing the competitions in the railways using the Porter’s competitive force model:
The Porter’s model shows some of the threats that affect the whole GLink services and
they are substitution threats, new entrants’ threat, threats of the rivalry, bargaining
from the suppliers and bargaining from the buyers. There impact on the light railways
in Gold Coast is given below.
Substitution threats:
The threat of substitution is high. If the services provided by the GLink are not
improvised, the passengers may simply prefer some other mode of conveyance. This will
affect the business greatly, as it may face financial loss along with the loss of customers.
New entrants’ threat:
Moderate or Less threat comes from the new entrants. The transportation
services are the sort of business which will always have competitors. But to establish a
completely new business of same category takes time. Hence, immediate threat is not
there. It can come after the new company is approved for the same business.
Threats of the rivalry:
There are no threats from the rivals, as they do not exist. GLink is the only light
railway service provider of Gold Coast.
Bargaining from the suppliers:
This is an issue which has a significant impact on the business, hence it can be
analyzed as one of the high threats. The whole process of development depends upon
the raw materials. If the suppliers do not provide them on time the services will
terminate ultimately.
Bargaining from the customers or the buyers:
Customers are the prime focus, because all of this is done for their satisfaction.
The tickets are not generally considered in bargaining list. It is fixed. Hence, there are
no such threats from buyers bargaining.
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3. Problems in Existing HAS of Transport System
The existing transport system of the Queensland Light railways GLink has many
facilities. They are very low, that is, they are close to the ground which benefits the
people in wheelchairs and senior citizen to avail them easily (Alexander and Merkert,
2017). They have application that helps in checking out the tram way frequency, ticket
prices, ticket outlets, stations detectors and many more. The GLink has also the facility
that enables the user to use the Go card. The only problem of the Glink Tram Railway
service is that there is no way to check on the crowd within the train. The trains should
be provided with something that shows the availability of the seats in the train so that
the passengers can avail them according to their comfort.
3.1 Human activity system that is problematic for the stake holders
The list of the stake holders for the system:
The Employees: They look after everything, like the passenger’s issue, their safety and
security.
The admin of the system: They look after the Information System and the databases and
keeps everything up dated.
The Manager: Takes the major decisions for the system.
The Bank: They take care of the finance involved in the business.The customers or the
passengers: Avail the train, utilize the facilities and provide feedback on the new
system. (Aboagye et al., 2015).
The employees fail to provide services in those fields. It is not possible for an
employee to keep track of the number of vacant seats in a compartment. Thus when
they are questioned about seat availability they are unable to comprehend
(Kaewunruen, 2017).
Thus the trains are available but the commuters are not attracted. This is
because the ticket prices for the buses as well as the light railways are almost same. In
fact, in some cases the buses takes lesser time than the rails. Moreover, private cars
plays a significant role in reducing the commuters in the public transport. All of these
just because it is more comfortable to travel in those instead of the mass transports.
These issues are identified by the stake holders and need improvements.
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3.2 Rich picture
3.3 As-Is process
3.4 Problem in the existing HAS with the Delone And McLean model:
DeLone and McLean proposed a model of success for the Information System.
There are six stages in the DeLone and Mclean model. They are the System Quality,
System’s information Quality, Use, User satisfaction, individual impact and
Organizational impact.
All of these work simultaneously and correctly to make a system successful. But the
existing system has certain issues that can be seen in the DeLone and McLean model on
IS success.
System Quality:
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There is a website for the GLink Light railways which delivers information about the
services, about its tickets and many more. But the website does not run properly on the
cell phones. And it is not possible for a person to check train timings and details using a
laptop while they are on the way.
Information quality:
The users are not only looking for a platform to buy tickets any more. They want some
thin g more. Like, they want to see the availability of the seats on the website. The
analysis of the website has brought out issues which say that the website sometimes
fails the online transactions while purchasing tickets.
Impact on the individual:
The purpose of GLink Railway services was to provide a smooth and hassle free service
to the passengers. The passengers firstly were unsatisfied with the website as they do
not find it useful, secondly there is no way to know whether the train is crowded or are
there any seats left for the passengers.
User Satisfaction:
The users faced a lots of issues while boarding the train. The information system of the
trains have no technology for resolving the seat availability issue. The ticket booked on
the websites were often failed due to the website malfunctioning, hence, desired seats
remained unavailable.
Impact over the organization:
This had a great impact over the business of the organization, especially over the
information system as complains were registered on a daily basis. When the employees
are questioned, they had no significant justification.
3.5 Efficiency, Efficacy, Effectiveness
System is considered to be efficient when the functionality of the system is correct.
If the people as well as the technologies utilized by the system functioned correctly,
then the system is considered to be running efficiently. The GLink Services can be
considered successful as it shows the train timing in their information system. The users
can make use of the Go Card, which is a smart card facility provided by the system.
When the card is placed in front of the card reader it detects it and the value is
deducted from the smart account of the customer. The website of the GLink which is
created for the customers to view the trains, book them functions almost correctly.
According to the user demand, there should be some way by which the seats
available in the train can be seen, either in the website or by anywhere within the train
or outside. There is no such technology that is developed which shows that. Hence, it
cannot be termed as effective.
The efficacy of the system to provide the correct output of the given input is termed
as efficacy. Here, the website fails to provide proper services. And there is no way to
know how many seats are available in the compartment.
4. New technology development:
The technologies have advanced, hence an information system can be developed which
can keep the records of the seats filled. This will help the passengers determine in
which compartment to board as the availability will be known to them by the time they
board the train.
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The employee hassle reduces as they don’t have to face situations where they have no
idea what to answer.
A digital board may be placed displaying the available seats. This can be achieved in a
very unique way.
4.1 Primary secondary value of the new model according to the value
chain]
The new information system that is introduced in the system is completely a
new technology that has never been used before. It is a digital seat tracker,
which is placed on each compartment of the GLink Trains. The device is
connected to a button placed on the seat. It is a smart system that displays the
number of seats available in the compartment on which it is placed. As the
passenger sits on a seat, it gets pressed automatically. There is database
present within the device that deducts the number of seats occupied from the
total number of seats present in the compartment. The display then shows the
available seats. If there is no seat available, it displays “Full”. The passenger is
free to decide whether or not to avail the train.
The list of the stake holders for the system:
The Employees: They look after everything, like the passenger’s issue, their safety and
security.
The admin of the system: They look after the Information System and the databases and
keeps everything up dated.
The Manager: Takes the major decisions for the system.
The Bank: They take care of the finance involved in the business.
The customers or the passengers: Avail the train, utilize the facilities and provide
feedback on the new system.
4.2 Knowledge developed from the new system:
The digital display will let the passengers know of the seats available in the
compartment. They can see if there are any seats at all present in the train. If not they
can wait for the next train, which is generally scheduled 8 minutes later. If there is any
issue regarding the pre ticket booked passengers’ seat availability that can be resolved.
The employees such as the station attendant can keep track of the seat availability and
assist the passengers in getting on the correct train compartment more conveniently.
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4.3 To-Be process model
4.4 Front and Back End activity
The developed device is customer facing. This because the board displays values. If the
seats are filled it displays “full”.
The back end of the device is a data base continuously updating the status of the
availability by adding or subtracting the number of seats filled in the system. It could be
considered that the proposed system is significantly customer facing as the display
board has been implemented solely for the purpose of providing the common people
with the ability of checking the availability of seats in the compartment.
4.5 Impact of the new technology
For a new technology, there are two kinds of impacts, one is the negative the other one
is the positive the positive impact of this system is that the passengers can see the
availability of the seats with the help of the display board. They can decide whether to
avail this train or not. They will be able to get into the right compartment with the
available seats and avoid the hassle of the crowd.
Though there are certain benefits of the system, there are some negative points too.
During the busy hours, when there is rush, it is not possible for a person to see the
board and decide. More over, if the compartment is full, by the time the person reaches
the next compartment, either he or she could miss the train or the other compartment
can get filled too.
4.6 Efficiency of the System
System is considered to be efficient when the functionality of the system is correct. If
correct output is generated when the input is provided then it is considered as efficient,
else, inefficient. The device designed can respond to the stimulus generated by the
button and analyze correct number of the seats filled and display the number of seats
available. Thus the system can be termed as efficient.
The effectiveness of the system shall be successful when the functionality of the system
is correct. If the display board show the desired result that is the number of empty seats
when they are available and “Full” when they are not, it can be considered as Effective.
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The efficacy of the system is determined when the system is consistent in providing
desired results all the time. If each time the number of the seats available matches with
the actual count of the seats empty in the compartment it is successful.
Recommendation
It is recommended to place the device outside each of the compartments. And the
buttons sending messages to the device can be placed under the seat or somewhere
were the pressure is adequate for the buttons to get pressed. In case the buttons are
supposed to be placed on the train handle, the passengers should be informed with the
help of announcement system to the press the button present in their respective
handles.
Though it is preferred to place it below the seats as the button remains “on” as long
as it is pressed and once the seat it empty it can go to the “off” mode.
5. Conclusion
Hence, from the report it can be concluded that G-Link is one of the very significant
light railway system of the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. It almost delivers up to
4000 passengers a day. Although it has many facilities, there are certain things that can
be implemented which can in turn attract more customers. Mass transport not only
reduces the congestion created by the private cars but also reduces the pollution level
due to emission of the gases. Hence, implementation of a technology which shows
number of seats available in a compartment of the train can be used so that the
customers can see the seat availability and go to the right compartment.
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