Chinese Smart Bus Demonstration Project and Its Implementation

This paper describes the results of a research project to better understand bus riders' satisfaction with and the change of the operating index of Zhongshan's Smart Bus, a national ITS demonstration project in China. The objective of the research is to let the demonstration project play an important reference role to the development of national ITS-Transit in China by collecting and analyzing data associated with bus rider' perceptions related to the use of the Smart Bus and the operating index of Smart Bus. The research methods involved a questionnaire investigation of system users and contrasting the bus' operating indexes before and after the demonstration project implemented. The overwhelming majority of the Smart Bus users survey reportes that Smart Bus could improve punctuality, safety and so on. Through contrasting the bus' operating indexes we have found that Smart Bus reduced average fuel consumption and maintenance expense. But it also shows that there are some disadvantages of the demonstration project. For example, the intelligent dispatching subsystem was not used fully.