What is headway in transportation?

Headway is a key input in calculating the overall route capacity of any transit system. A system that requires large headways has more empty space than passenger capacity, which lowers the total number of passengers or cargo quantity being transported for a given length of line (railroad or highway, for instance). read more

Headway is a measurement of the distance or time between vehicles in a transit system. The minimum headway is the shortest such distance or time achievable by a system without a reduction in the speed of vehicles. read more

The inverse of the headway is called the frequency, essentially capturing the number of vehicles per unit time past a certain point on a route, usually measured in vehicles per hour. = = As an example, a route with a 10-minute headway has a frequency of 6 vehicles per hour. read more

Unfortunately, studying traffic flow is difficult because driver behavior is something that cannot be predicted with one-hundred percent certainty. Fortunately, drivers tend to behave within a reasonably consistent range and, thus, traffic streams tend to have some reasonable consistency and can be roughly represented mathematically. read more