Advancing Accessible Bus Transit: Collaborative Design of Bus Transit Schedules

Details

• Creators:
  Fox, Sarah ; Martelaro, Nikolas
• Corporate Creators:
  Carnegie Mellon University
• Corporate Contributors:
  Carnegie Mellon University. Traffic21 Institute. Safety21 University Transportation Center (UTC) ; United States. Department of Transportation. University Transportation Centers (UTC) Program ; United States. Department of Transportation. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology ; United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Accessibility
  • Bus drivers
  • Mobile applications
  • Persons with disabilities
  • Public transit
  • Signaling
  • Transit riders
  • Transportation safety
  • Human factors
  • Schedules
  More +
• Publication/ Report Number:
  642
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Edition:
  Final Report (July 1, 2025 - July 31, 2026)
• Corporate Publisher:
  Carnegie Mellon University. Traffic21 Institute. Safety21 University Transportation Center (UTC)
• Description:
  Bus schedules shape both the service riders receive and the working conditions under which operators provide it. Concerns about scheduling emerged through preliminary research with operators, who described time pressure and the erosion of breaks, and disability advocates, who identified schedule reliability as essential to inclusive bus service. The study combined an interdisciplinary evidence review with 24 semi-structured interviews: eight schedulers and scheduling experts, six union representatives or operator-leaders, five vendors and transit-data specialists, and five transit IT professionals. Findings show that schedule quality cannot be evaluated solely through cost, running time, and on-time performance. Participants described schedules as negotiated sociotechnical artifacts shaped by resource constraints, collective bargaining agreements, software, fragmented data, local expertise, and translations among operational and passenger-information systems. They distinguished schedule recovery from meaningful rest; identified run construction, reliefs, spread, days off, and bidding as central to operators' quality of life; and emphasized that service reliability and operator well-being are usually interdependent. Preliminary recommendations from this research include separating operating recovery from protected breaks, evaluating whole workdays rather than isolated trips, establishing consequential worker-feedback processes, making scheduling objectives and tradeoffs visible, and using both operational data and situated knowledge to evaluate schedule changes.
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  69A3552344811 ; 69A3552348316
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/93559/dot_93559_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 556.08 KB]
• Collection(s):
  University Transportation Centers
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:a5f2c2e27202b56e9a3e036f22cdf9c71be3fe209093083c3223192b4c52b195ea11695288696dacf64d5f15710f98cbe07bdb1420ba686274e83e5a68693c8c