The problem

Buses carry the majority of daily commuters in Sri Lanka, but there is no public real-time information system for them. Passengers standing at a halt cannot tell whether a route is running late, is already full, or has stopped for the day because of a breakdown, strike, weather, or a diverted road. People miss work, miss connections, and wait in the sun or rain with no information.

Our solution

Kohomada Bus? ("How's the bus?") is a lightweight, no-login web app with two parts:

• Route & fare finder — search by route number or by start and destination, see the full stop list, and estimate the fare and travel time for your trip.
• Live status reports — any rider can report a route as normal, crowded, delayed, or not running, optionally noting the bus plate and where the bus is. The next passenger sees a live status dot for that route.

How the fare estimate works

Each stop has a distance from the route start. We take the distance between your two stops, apply a minimum fare of Rs. 30 for the first stage (~2.6 km), add about Rs. 8 for every further 1.6 km stage, and round to the nearest Rs. 5. This is a guidance estimate, not an official fare.

Why crowd-sourced

Buses are not GPS-tracked, so there is no feed to read. But thousands of riders are already on these routes. If even a few report what they see, everyone else gets information that does not exist today. Multiple reports on one route reinforce each other, so a single wrong entry does not mislead.

Sample data

The app ships with 8 real Colombo-area routes and their approximate stops and distances, plus seeded example reports so the live feed is meaningful during a demo.