Planning your first bus route

Create new bus routes from scratch in a few clicks.

In this tutorial, we'll walk through the process of creating bus routes, defining patterns, and scheduling trips using Podaris.

The routes you create in our platform will be structured similarly to GTFS, associating patterns and trips to calendars and vehicles that can be shared with different routes.

Patterns belong to routes and define the physical path along which a vehicle travels.

Trips define when, how and where a service will run, and they can be frequency based, fleet based or exactly defined according to specific timetable.

• Creating a new route

1. Go to the Services Panel
2. Click the Add Route button
3. Select Schedule Driven
   
4. Select Bus Route
   
5. This will create Route 1
   
   

• Creating a pattern

1. Open the Patterns tab of your route
   
2. Click the Add button to create a new pattern
3. Click on the map to add stops and our system will create your pattern following the street network
   
   
   
4. Once you are happy with your pattern, click stop drawing
5. Save your pattern clicking on Save button on the Service tool properties

To create a pattern in the opposite direction:

1. Click the Add button to create a new pattern
2. Switch the direction to inbound
   
3. Start creating your pattern as you did for your outbound pattern
   
4. Once you are happy with your pattern, click Stop Drawing
5. Save your pattern clicking on Save button
   
   

• Creating a trip

1. Go to the trips tab
   
2. Click + Add button
3. A window to set your trip configurations will open
     
   1. Pattern - which pattern these trips use
   2. Timings - these allow the same pattern to take a different amount of time
   3. Calendar - Which days of the week the trip relates to
   4. Vehicle - affects capacity and cost
   5. Type - frequency, fleet-based or exact 
   6. Headway - the frequency of the service
   7. Layovers - added at both ends of the trips

When you create a project, our system will have by default a Calendar set for weekdays and a vehicle according to the mode selected, which in this case is Bus. 

1. Keep the pattern as Pattern A
   
2. Keep the calendar as Weekdays
   
3. Keep the vehicle as Bus
   
4. Keep the type to Frequency
   
5. Set the Headway as you want
    
6. Set the Start Time of your service
    
7. Set the End Time as well
   
8. Save the trip
9. Click the Duplicate button next to Trip 1 to duplicate it and change the Pattern to Pattern B to create the return journey
   

Now that you have created your new bus route, you can analyse the catchment area for each of its stations and understand how many people will be served by the new route. See how to create these analyses and other isochrones here.

Likewise, it is possible to create cost models which can be used to investigate the financial implications of your route. See how to assemble them here.

Once you are satisfied with the new route you have created, it is also possible to export it in GTFS format. To do this, access this article.