Signal Timing Optimization for Transit Priority at Near-Saturated Intersections

Abstract

Transit signal priority is a useful way to improve transit operations in urban networks. Most of the existing studies have been conducted in conditions with low saturation to avoid the detrimental effects of vehicles without priority. However, from the public transit point of view, it is more meaningful to assign transit signal priority when the degree of the saturation intersections is high. This study proposes a signal control model for transit signal priority to minimize the overall delay at near-saturated intersection. The delay increment is calculated in three scenarios for buses and private vehicles according to the dissipation time of the vehicular queue. A set of constrains are set up to avoid queue overflows and to ensure the rationalization of the signal timing. The proposed control model is tested based on a case study and numerical experiments. The results show that the proposed model can reduce the total person delay at near-saturated intersections. The length of priority time, degree of saturation, and number of lanes are the three main influencing factors. More than 6% reductions in person delay can be obtained for undersaturated intersections when the priority time is less than 5 s. Moreover, even when the intersection saturation is 0.95, the bus signal priority can be applied if only the priority time is less than 5 s.