01474022

Component

Preferential treatments for transit are needed for high-occupancy transit vehicles to improve their operations. However, these treatments are often not effective in saturated traffic conditions when transit operates in mixed traffic. Additional Right-of-Way (ROW) for transit at intersections can be achieved with Queue Jumpers. They allow buses to bypass the waiting queues by using queue jumper lanes and getting an early green signal. The goal of this paper is to evaluate individual and combined effects of Queue Jumpers and Transit Signal Priority (TSP) on performance of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system and vehicular traffic along 3500 S in West Valley City, Utah. Four VISSIM microsimulation models were developed for evaluation: the existing scenario without special treatments for transit (Base), the QJ scenario that introduced Queue Jumpers only, the TSP scenario that implemented TSP only, and a combination of Queue Jumpers and TSP (QJ & TSP). The implementation of any transit strategy resulted in significant improvements in BRT operations. The QJ & TSP scenario yielded highest benefits: 13-22% reduction in BRT travel times, better corridor progression, lower intersection delays and number of stops, increased speed (22%), and better travel time reliability and headway adherence. Transit treatments did not affect private traffic along the corridor. These strategies, however, had certain impacts on side streets. QJ & TSP scenario increased average delays for cross-street traffic by 15%. However, with small improvements in QJ and TSP settings, the combination of the two strategies can be most beneficial and highly desirable for implementation.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB25 Traffic Signal Systems.

01470560

13-0483

English

18p

2013

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Bus priority; Bus rapid transit; Bus transit operations; Microsimulation; Traffic flow; Traffic signal preemption; Traffic simulation

Queue jumper lanes

Operations and Traffic Management; Public Transportation; I73: Traffic Control

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-0483

PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 12:13PM