CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 Introduction

The safe, efficient transportation of students to and from school is a challenge faced by school districts across the country. Providers of public and human services transportation also aim to deliver their services efficiently. While there are a number of ways in which efficiency may be improved, the implementation and use of technology and coordination among transportation providers has regularly produced significant, positive results. Most of these efforts have been located in urban locations, but there have been rural successes as well. Student transportation is usually managed by school administrators who have additional, demanding responsibilities. As a result, these administrators often lack the time, skills, and tools needed to consider full-scale overhauls of their transportation system. Instead, small, necessary changes are made to keep the system operational.  A “school bus travel pass or ticket” is a paper based pass issued to students eligible to receive subsidized travel under the School Student Transport Scheme. An “interim travel pass or ticket” is a temporary pass issued in circumstances where an incident of misbehavior occurs and a bus driver or operator considers it appropriate to revoke the student’s school bus travel pass. Such an interim pass is valid for a minimum of five school days. One skill that is often absent from transit parks in institutions is that of electronic ticket management (Ripplinger and Wang, 2007).

There are no doubts that the implementation of automated systems for fare collection, or electronic ticketing, is already a reality. The increasing use of electronic ticketing systems is not only related to the above mentioned phenomena but also, and mainly, to the advantages that those systems provide to bus operators. Among those advantages, we can highlight the replacing of physical means by information management that, besides speeding up the procedures, allows a better control of the operation, with less effort, consequently resulting in a lower operational cost. The speed in knowing the financial status of a bus route operation is one of the immediate

results of the information management in the automated fare collection procedure. Under this scenario, a cultural change in the transport sector could also be a consequence of such procedure of technological improvement. This shows that the adoption of this new technology is possibly an unchangeable strategy, with clear impacts on the development of new learning areas for the company itself and a direct consequence on the increase of the quality of services provided.

1.1 Theoretical Background

With due reference to the increase in the utilization of information and communication technologies, organizations are applying ICT to foster their daily activities. Transportation is one of the activities in an academic institution and it is important that proper record is maintained by the park through the provision of tickets. Ticketing is a tool for the implementation of a pricing policy with the consideration of operational, commercial and social objectives. The ticketing system is the translation of fares into concrete means of payment (for the passenger) and fare collection (for the operator). Several types of tickets are used in public transport systems (ticket-based price discrimination). In other words, the price depends on the ticket type used (Mezghani, 2008). Implementing electronic ticketing will enable transit parks to be more organized in their operations and delivering of service to passengers.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Transit parks in institutions of higher learning are not properly managed. There is no effective record keeping of tickets sold and the details of those that bought the tickets. This makes reporting very difficult and full of errors. Students can only board vehicles when they have physical cash at hand. Meanwhile they could as well gain the services of the transit park by presenting a valid ticket. The absence of electronic transit ticket management system makes it difficult to organize the transaction record of the transit park on a daily basis. It is in view of this situation that this research study is conducted to solve the problem of ticket management system for university.

1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of this study is to develop a ticket management system for university. The following are the objectives of the study:

• To develop an electronic ticketing system for transit park.
• To develop a system that will print ticket for different road routes or destinations
• To develop a system that can be queried to generate reports of electronic tickets sold on daily basis.

1.4 Significance of the Study

The significance of the study is that it will provide transit parks with an electronic solution to sell their tickets and maintain adequate record. It will provide information on daily tickets generated and also the confirmation of transit tickets to eliminate fraud. The study will also serve as a useful reference material to other researchers seeking similar information on the subject.

1.5 Scope of the Study

This study covers Ticket management system for Universities a case study of university of Uyo transit park. It is limited to just one park in the institution premises.

1.6 Organization of Research

This research work is organized into five chapters. Chapter one is concerned with the introduction of the research study and it presents the preliminaries, theoretical background, statement of the problem, aim and objectives of the study, significance of the study, scope of the study, organization of the research and definition of terms.

Chapter two focuses on the literature review, the contributions of other scholars on the subject matter is discussed.

Chapter three is concerned with the system analysis and design. It presents the research methodology used in the development of the system, it analyzes the present system to identify the problems and provides information on the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed system. The system design is also presented in this chapter.

Chapter four presents the system implementation and documentation, the choice of programming language, analysis of modules, choice of programming language and system requirements for implementation.

Chapter five focuses on the summary, constraints of the study, conclusion and recommendations are provided in this chapter based on the study carried out.

1.7 Definition of Terms

Ticket: A pass entitling the holder to board a train, a bus or other means of transportation.

Transit: The conveyance of people or goods from one place to another and also the vehicles used for such conveyance.

Park: A vehicle parking space usually reserved for picking rides for transportation of people and goods from one place to another.

Management: The planning and controlling of the affairs of a business or organization.