Transit Signal Priority System Design

Project 2 Transit Signal Priority

Semester 1 - 2017

Introduction The provision of transit signal priority (TSP) on arterial streets is a transit preferential treatment that has received increasing attention. In practice, however, studies have shown that TSP is ineffective during peak hours due to buses not being able to bypass long waiting queues during these hours, which has had a limiting effect on the applications in practice. A special type of bus preferential treatment that has the potential of avoiding this weakness is queue jumper lanes. A queue jumper lane combines a short stretch of a special lane, such as a left-turn lane, with signal priority to allow buses to bypass a waiting queue of traffic and then to cut out in front of the queue by getting an early green signal. A queue jumper lane can essentially operate like a bus lane at the vicinity of an intersection. However, unlike bus lanes, a queue jumper lane does not take a lane away from the general traffic, making its implementation easier to justify.

Study Particulars In this project you will plan the implementation of a transit signal priority system with queue jumper lane for the intersection below, where jumper lanes are provided for busses travelling from west to east and east to west. The jumper lanes are also used as left turn lanes.

Within this study, the traffic volume is not specified in numbers, but W-E / E-W travel is at least double the volume that travel from N-S or S-N. There are high frequency bus routes traveling W-E and E-W and the jumper lanes are to be equipped with detectors to detect the bus movement.

Submission Deliverables Your transit signal priority system implementation report should contain the following (30% weight):

• a signal design (phasing only) for the intersection without jumper lanes and transit priority • a signal design (phasing only) for the intersection with jumper lanes and green extension

strategy, including choice of appropriate bus detectors • a signal design (phasing only) for the intersection with jumper lanes and early green strategy,

including choice of appropriate bus detectors • a signal design (phasing only) for the intersection with jumper lanes and phase insertion

strategy, including choice of appropriate bus detectors