Public transportation signage based on bloom filters (rough mockup)
Hello, I was running around Germany, hectically navigating public transportation, and getting lost all the time. I noticed that every station had i platforms, each used lists of n buses (trains, whatever) arriving, each has their list of m destinations. That means I would be scanning i x n x m items just to see if I was at the correct stop. As I was nervous, for every bus that arrived, I would rescan the list of stops to double check. I began thinking how I could make a better system. Linked is a very shoddy mockup of how bloom filters could be used to allow passengers O(1) lookup time for…
In plain words
This project proposes using bloom filters to improve public transportation signage at busy stations. Instead of scanning through multiple platforms, buses, and destinations to find the correct stop, passengers could perform fast lookups to verify they're at the right platform and bus. The mockup demonstrates how this data structure could reduce complexity as transportation networks grow more intricate, replacing traditional list-based systems with a more efficient approach for real-time passenger navigation.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hello, I was running around Germany, hectically navigating public transportation, and getting lost all the time. I noticed that every station had i platforms, each used lists of n buses (trains, whatever) arriving, each has their list of m destinations. That means I would be scanning i x n x m items just to see if I was at the correct stop. As I was nervous, for every bus that arrived, I would rescan the list of stops to double check. I began thinking how I could make a better system. Linked is a very shoddy mockup of how bloom filters could be used to allow passengers O(1) lookup time for which platform+bus is the correct one. I believe it's likely for public transportation to grow increasingly more complex in the future, as population grows, and under the current list-based system, this will make the signage ever more complex. I think some bloom filter mechanism could reduce that complexity. So, here is my fantasy, my day dream. What do you think?
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