Trimess

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Trimet-come on, get with the program

Many cities are plagued by bus bunching at peak hours: one bus stops frequently to pick up and drop off passengers, slowing its progress. The bus behind it, finding stops cleared, goes increasingly fast, until the two meet.
It’s not unusual for three or four buses to collect this way, frustrating riders who have to wait increasingly long intervals for a bunch of buses to arrive all at once.
The traditional solution—for the second or third bus to pull over and idle at the curb for several minutes—frustrates riders even more.
Emerging technology may offer a better solution.
Busting Bus Bunching With Traffic Signals - Forbes

1 comment:

Jason McHuff said...

This is supposed to be happening here. I'm pretty sure one of the traffic signal priority reports said that it was decreasing bus bunching. See https://www.google.com/search?q=trimet+"transit+signal+priority"

And the new dispatch system is supposed to help, too since the current one can only give basic info. We'll see what happens.