Bus Rapid Transit and Automation: Opportunities for Synergy

This paper identifies the opportunities for making significant improvements to bus transit operations by combining a variety of technical and service innovations that have heretofore been treated separately. Recently, increased attention has been devoted to “bus rapid transit” as an operational concept for enabling buses to provide a level of service closer to that normally only achievable in more expensive rail transit systems. When this concept is combined with APTS fleet management and passenger information systems, automated vehicle control technologies and innovative high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) facility and operational improvements, there is a potential for larger improvements in service and economics, referred to here as Automated Bus Rapid Transit (ABRT). The components and deployment staging issues are identified here, and the longer-term implications for progress toward automated highway systems are also described.