An Online Optimal Bus Signal Priority Strategy to Equalise Headway in Real-Time

Abstract

Bus bunching is a severe problem that affects the service levels of public transport systems. Most of the previous studies in the field of Bus Signal Priority (BSP) and Transit Signal Priority (TSP) focus on reducing a bus delay at signalised intersections and ignore the importance of balancing the bus headways. However, since general BSP methods allocate uneven priorities for individual buses, the headways of bus sequences are prioritised or delayed randomly, increasing the likelihood of bus bunching. To address this problem and to improve the reliability of bus services, we propose an online optimisation model to determine the signal duration and splits for each traffic intersection and each signal cycle for bus priority. The proposed model is able to induce the signal timing back to a baseline when the BSP request frequency is low. Using the proposed model, a statistically significant reduction of 10.0% was achieved for bus headway deviation and 6.4% for passenger waiting times. The simulation-based evaluation results also indicate that the proposed model does not affect the efficiency of bus services and other vehicles significantly.