An Arterial-Based Transit Signal Priority Control System

Abstract

To contend with the negative impacts of intersection-based transit system priority (TSP) control on side-street traffic, and also to enhance its effectiveness from the perspective of the whole traffic flow on the arterial, this study presents an integrated arterial-based TSP system to promote bus operations. The proposed system employs an off-line transit-based progression system to produce the base signal plan, in which is embedded a feature to minimize the negative effects of local TSP implementation on non-priority movements at critical intersections. With its specially designed evaluation function, the proposed system is capable of minimizing the ineffective activation of local TSP which often results in undesirable patterns of traffic arriving at the next intersection downstream and excessive delays for all vehicles. Extensive evaluation with simulation experiments confirms that the proposed system, integrating a local TSP with the transit-based signal progression system, can indeed circumvent the deficiencies of conventional TSP controls and produce the expected benefits to both passenger cars and transit vehicles over the entire arterial road.