[rvb]

When possible, they pick "control points" at places where there are usually no passengers on board — for example, the ends of a linear route, or the bus depot.

But otherwise, they have a bunch of optimizations to spread the pauses out so they aren't too jarring. They also display the timer prominently so that riders are aware of what's going on.

In practice, riders seem happy with the tradeoff, since it has resulted in overall lower times to get from point A to point B.