Author Description

In 2019, the U.S. DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) launched the Intercity Bus Atlas, an interactive online map of intercity bus transit services in the United States. The Intercity Bus Atlas was first developed by the American Intercity Bus Riders Association to facilitate the promotion of intercity bus use by providing comprehensive service provider, route, and scheduling information in a public-facing online platform. Before this, there had been no publicly available national clearinghouse, list, or map of intercity bus services.NCHRP Research Report 1150: Implementation of the National Intercity Bus Atlas, from TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, documents that the development of the data framework for mapping and posting by the BTS has been successfully developed. Technical challenges and hesitancy by some private carriers to share certain operating data resulted in several key information gaps. The report offers suggested future improvements to the atlas such as including more service characteristics and strategies to address data collection challenges.