The primary challenge for an urban bus system is to maintain constant headways between successive buses. Most bus systems try to achieve this by adherence to a schedule; but this is undermined by the tendency of headways to collapse, so that buses travel in bunches. To counter this, we propose a new method of coördinating buses. Our method abandons the idea of a schedule and even any a priori target headway. Under our scheme headways are dynamically self-equalizing and the natural headway of the system tends to emerge spontaneously. Headways also become self-correcting in that after disturbances they reëqualize without intervention by management or even awareness of the drivers.

We report on a successful implementation to control a bus route in Atlanta.

Integrated, high quality, and accessible transit systems are essential for attracting travelers to shift from private to public. This change in personal behavior is desired in order to reduce congestion and air pollutant emissions in city centers. This paper focuses on evaluating the impact of fare integration on transit ridership and travel behavior, using the city of Haifa, Israel, as a case study. The city's new, integrated, fare policy changed the historically complex per-boarding system to a simple five-zone fare system with free transfers, reducing fares for many passengers. Using fare-box data, on-board surveys and travel-behavior model estimation, we show that the new fare policy managed to negate the downward trend in transit ridership. Fare-box data showed a significant increase in single ticket sales of up to 25% over the first year following the launch of the reform; the survey's results pointed to an increase of 7.7% in passenger trips and 18.6% in boarding. The number of passenger boarding per trip increased from 1.38 to 1.52, implying that people were utilizing the free transfer option and enjoying a wider range of routes. The model results showed that fare reduction was a significant factor in attracting transit users, and that the public transport reform had three important contributions: first, it encouraged travelers to shift from private cars or taxi to buses; second, it created new trips, offering more opportunities for activity participation; and third, it increased travel options by allowing travelers to choose a better route.

On-board survey is one of the most common survey methods utilized on transit units like buses to obtain vital information regarding customer trip characteristics, travel behavior, demographic characteristics, and customers’ attitude toward services. The quantity and the quality of data collected through on-board surveys are very critical and often are a major concern for transit systems because survey results are used for current or future route planning, modeling, etc. Thus, applying appropriate survey techniques for on-board surveys is crucial to collecting the required amount of data to fulfill the transit system's current and future needs without survey cost and time overruns. This study tested three different on-board survey techniques to quantitatively evaluate the effects of each technique on the overall response rate and unit cost. These three tests are (a) length of questionnaire, (b) incentives, and (c) surveyors. The tests were conducted on selected routes of the Tulsa Transit System. The test results indicate that different combinations of techniques will result in different response rates and unit costs. Thus, good planning and piloting tests for the different on-board survey techniques, and appropriate interpretations of the pilot test results, are crucial to acquiring the expected performance of the main survey while staying within budget.