Enabling Paratransit and TNC Services with Blockchain Based Smart Contracts

Abstract

Paratransit services provide mobility solutions for disabled travelers and older adults. In the United States, the requirements for efficient and affordable provision of these services significantly increased in 1990 with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. These transportation services are essential to the well-being of these populations, however, nearly thirty years later, they remain notoriously expensive to provide and inconvenient for its passengers. The issues related to paratransit are apparent from passenger feedback and complaint forms. In this work, we explore a potential solution for improving paratransit services under consideration by transit agencies around the world, the integration of TNC’s (Transportation Network Companies) such as Uber, Lyft, Didi or Grab and taxi services with paratransit. The contribution of this work is to develop privacy preserving secure smart contracts to enable these extended paratransit systems. We examine the use of blockchain and simple IoT devices to host these contracts. Through proof of concept prototype development using open source blockchain resources, we examined the proposed architecture and system design.