The project develops a flexible (flex) route bus system, as an alternative to fixed route system plans, to enhance a transit riders experience by routing buses in real-time based on rider demand. The architecture leverages existing smart phone, wireless, Internet and GPS technologies but drives innovation through online routing algorithms based on recent theoretical work in optimization and machine learning. The technology has been successfully applied to collaborative unmanned aerial and ground vehicles. The R&D develops comprehensive rider demand and bus service models within a computer simulation and then uses the simulation for qualitative and quantitative analysis. The simulation will study metrics such as average time to passenger pickup and bus fleet mileage for both the proposed flex solution and the traditional fixed route method.
