An Analytical Approach to Evaluate and Design Integrated Transit Priority Treatments in a Network

Transit priority treatments are widely accepted as viable solutions to reduce the transit delay and variability of service. Amongst these treatments, Transit Priority Lanes (TPL) can address the congestion delays along a segment and Transit Signal Priority (TSP) strategies seek to decrease bus delays and travel time variability at intersections. While numerous research have been undertaken on each of these strategies, their integrated evaluation and design is mainly limited to an isolated intersection or a single corridor. A new method to analytically evaluate the effect of integrated TSP and TPL and their location in a network is presented here. The proposed framework comprises three modules. Firstly, an evaluation method is implemented to reflect the impacts of priority treatments on private vehicles and transit services. Secondly, a heuristic approach is proposed to measure TSP and TPL integrated deployment scenarios throughout a network. This method is developed in VISUM modelling software. Finally, a searching algorithm is linked to the VISUM model to find the optimum solution amongst all possible combinations. The outputs of the proposed framework are an optimum set of intersections and corridors for TSP and TPL deployment, respectively. The method is applied to an example network and the results confirmed the potential of this framework to find optimum combination of priority treatments in a network.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP050 Standing Committee on Bus Transit Systems. Alternate title: Analytical Approach to Evaluate and Design Integrated Transit Priority Treatments in a Network.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Bagherian, Mehdi
  • Mesbah, Mahmoud
  • Ferreira, Luis
  • Charles, Philip
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
• Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 14p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bus priority; Delays; Design; Mathematical models; Networks; Public transit; Traffic signal priority
• Subject Areas: Design; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01626892
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-04356
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 27 2017 9:27AM