Customized buses can achieve an accurate match between travel demands and responsive travel service supply to meet the emerging travel requirements of flexibility and carbon reduction. However, sustainable development of customized bus systems and routes still faces many problems. By analyzing the relevant literature in the past decade, this paper compares the hot spots and trends of customized buses, summarizes the common problems of existing research, and forecasts the important future research directions. Equity plays a crucial role in the sustainable development of customized bus service systems, and existing route planning studies have begun to focus on the equity for disadvantaged groups and spatial equilibrium. Future research should focus on addressing the establishment of a fairness evaluation index system, systematic consideration of route planning and scheduling operations under fairness constraints, etc. Customized bus system planning must take into account the design of new passenger fare discounts and loyalist benefits, and sustain efforts at all stages of demand evolution to improve the sustainability and survival rate of customized bus routes and systems.

customized bus  /  demand responsiveness  /  equity