... The Kowloon Motor Bus Company (1933) Limited (KMB), the largest of the five competing bus companies in Hong Kong, provides almost 30 percent of all daily public transportation trips. KMB serves more than 3 million passengers daily with a fleet of almost 4,400 buses. Its 30 Customer Service Hotline representatives handle as many as 100, 000 bus route information enquires each month.

KMB recently introduced a new information system called the Digital Map Passenger Enquiry System (DMPES), which is used to assist the hotline staff. It is based on ESRI’s GIS software and technology and includes ArcSDE, ArcInfo, and Internet Map Server (IMS). DMPES optimizes the storage, retrieval and presentation of spatial information so that the hotline operators can quickly respond to customer queries. MapObjects IMS is used to geo-reference the starting and ending location of a passenger's proposed trip. Then, using an attribute search and a set of relationships, the system picks the most optimal route...

The screen layout of the Digital Map Passenger Enquiry System. The box in the upper left-hand corner of the screen constantly uploads real-time traffic news.

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