Customer information at bus stops.

This synthesis will be of interest to transit agency general managers, bus operations, facilities and maintenance, and marketing and customer service staffs, as well as to other municipal transportation and marketing professionals. It addresses user information systems and describes current transit agency practices regarding customer information at bus stops within the text and through tables and multiple graphic illustrations. Administrators, practitioners, and researchers are continually faced with issues or problems on which there is much information, either in the form of reports or in terms of undocumented experience and practice. Unfortunately, this information often is scattered or not readily available in the literature, and, as a consequence, in seeking solutions, full information on what has been learned about an issue or problem is not assembled. Costly research findings may go unused, valuable experience may be overlooked, and full consideration may not be given to the available methods of solving or alleviating the issue or problem. In an effort to correct this situation, the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis Project carried out by the Transportation Research Board as the research agency, has the objective of reporting on common transit issues and problems and synthesizing available information. The synthesis reports from this endeavour constitute a TCRP publication series in which various forms of relevant information are assembled into single, concise documents pertaining to a specific or closely related issue or problem. This report of the Transportation Research Board covers types of signs and supplemental information displays, program implementation considerations, program effectiveness, and advanced technology applications. Selected transit agency case studies detail five different perspectives on the development and deployment of on-street programs. To develop this synthesis in a comprehensive manner and to ensure inclusion of significant knowledge, available information was assembled from numerous sources, including a number of public transportation agencies. A topic panel of experts in the subject areas was established to guide the researchers in organizing and evaluating the collected data, and to review the final synthesis report. This synthesis is an immediately useful document that records practices that were acceptable within the limitations of the knowledge available at the time of its preparation. As the processes of advancement continue, new knowledge can be expected to be added to that now at hand.