Georgia Tech’s NextBuzz system, developed by ISyE Professor John Bartholdi and team in conjunction with Georgia Tech’s Parking and Transportation Services office, received the prestigious Innovation award by the Georgia Transit Association for its implemented innovative ideas and problem-solving techniques in its transit system.

“We believe that projects such as NextBuzz provide a great learning opportunity, and are pleased to have partnered with such excellent students and faculty, resulting in real improvements for Tech’s transit system and a greater transportation experience for the Institute’s constituents,” the Parking and Transportation Services office said.

After 1.5 years of testing, NextBuzz was implemented on the Trolley transit system in 2013. The program was developed by John Bartholdi, Manhattan Associates Chair of Supply Chain Management at ISyE, Don Eisenstein, professor at the University of Chicago, Russell Clark, senior research scientist at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, Jin Lee, ISyE graduate student and research engineer, and several other students involved with the Vertical Integration Project’s Intelligent Transportation Systems project team.

NextBuzz is a software and hardware application designed to coordinate buses on a fixed route, dynamically adjusting the layover time of a vehicle at the end of a line based on real time data in order to equalize headways and reduce the occurrence of bus bunching. Subsequent testing has shown that vehicle headways have been reduced resulting in shorter wait times. With that, there is less variability in headways, so service is more reliable.