Popular L.A. Bus Line to Replace Schedule With ‘Headway-Based Operations’

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) bus system is switching to “headway-based operation” to improve performance along a popular east-west route. The Metro 16 bus will operate without a schedule between 7 am and 5 pm on weekdays.

According to an article by Daniel Martinez for LAist, headway-based operations differ from Metro’s standard timetable bus service design schedule by focusing on the spacing between buses (i.e., headways), rather than a set schedule of departure and arrivals.

Martinez also explains how headway-based operations work in an era of real-time location technology:

Thanks to advances in technology, supervisors will monitor the intervals at departure, in the middle of the line, and at the end of service. Additionally, bus operators will have tablet displays that provide real-time feedback on when their pacing is good, when to slow down to increase the gap between buses, and when to speed up to avoid bunching.

Headway based operations can thus mitigate bus bunching—when several buses can pass in quick succession, leaving a longer-than-planned gap between headways.

“Similar headway based programs had been tried in other large cities like Honolulu, Austin, and Seattle,” according to Martinez, but Metro scrapped its own previous attempt at headway-based operations with the launch of rapid service back in the early 2000s.