About This Notebook

Why this site exists

Public discussion about transit often stops at the surface: a route should be more frequent, a bus should be on time, a stop should be somewhere else. Those conversations are reasonable, but they rarely touch the constraints planners work within — running time, recovery time, vehicle and operator availability, labor agreements, funding cycles, street conditions, and the many trade-offs between competing goals.

A Transit Planner’s Notebook explains that work in plain language. Each article is written so a curious member of the public can follow it, while still being accurate enough for transit employees and industry professionals to find it useful.

What you will find here

• How bus schedules, blocks, and runs are built, and why they look the way they do.
• Service design principles: coverage, frequency, directness, and connections.
• Operations topics such as bunching, on-time performance, and detours.
• Bus stop placement, spacing, amenities, and accessibility.
• Destination signs, route naming, and rider-facing information.
• Transit technology: scheduling software, AVL, fare systems, and data.
• Transit history and the documents that record it.

About the author

Craig is an experienced public transit planner with a practical background in route planning, bus scheduling, service development, transit data, passenger information, and operational coordination. His work focuses on turning service concepts into schedules that can be operated reliably in the real world. This includes developing timetables, reviewing running times and recovery, building vehicle blocks, evaluating service performance, coordinating bus stops and transit-center operations, and preparing information used by operators, dispatchers, supervisors, and passengers. Craig created A Transit Planner’s Notebook to explain the planning work behind everyday public transportation. The site reflects his personal experience and general industry knowledge and does not represent any particular employer, transit agency, contractor, or public organization.

Craig has extensive experience in fixed-route bus planning and scheduling, with responsibilities spanning both the technical and practical sides of transit service. His professional experience includes: • Designing and revising bus routes and service patterns • Developing public timetables and operating schedules • Establishing running times, headways, recovery, and connections • Creating trips, blocks, vehicle assignments, and service-day schedules • Evaluating ridership, on-time performance, and operating data • Coordinating service changes with operations and other departments • Reviewing bus stop locations, transit-center access, and passenger facilities • Preparing GTFS and passenger-information data • Working with scheduling, performance-management, and transit-data systems • Supporting battery-electric and alternative-fuel vehicle assignments • Developing destination-sign codes, displays, and programming standards • Preparing operating notices, procedures, reports, and regulatory documentation • Translating complex planning decisions into clear information for employees, management, and the public His approach is grounded in the belief that a schedule must do more than look correct on paper. It must work for passengers, operators, vehicles, and the communities being served.

Areas of interest

Craig’s areas of interest include: • Public transit route planning • Bus scheduling and blocking • Running-time and recovery analysis • Transit operations and service reliability • Ridership and on-time-performance data • Bus stops and transit-center design • Passenger information and public timetables • GTFS and real-time transit information • Battery-electric and alternative-fuel bus operations • Transit scheduling and operations software • Destination signs, sign codes, and display technology • Transit maps, manuals, timetables, and historical documents • Preservation and digitization of transit history • Practical uses of databases, automation, and artificial intelligence in public transportation His particular interests are the details passengers rarely see: how trips are connected into blocks, how recovery protects service reliability, how vehicle limitations affect assignments, and how planning decisions ultimately shape the service operated on the street.

Editorial approach

Articles are based on professional experience and general industry practice. Agency policies, labor agreements, laws, and local conditions vary widely, so nothing here should be treated as agency policy or professional advice for a specific project. Corrections are welcome and appreciated.