A BUS PRIORITY SIGNAL STRATEGY FOR REGULATING HEADWAYS OF BUSES

Abstract

Since congestion on roads has deteriorated quality of bus service, attractiveness of bus has been weakened. Bus priority signal is a method to shorten control delay of bus at signalized intersections and to improve its service quality, such as reliability, in-vehicle time and waiting time. It may, however, cause congestion in general traffic. For this reason, this study attempts to develop a signal priority strategy to improve bus service quality while little inducing additional delay in general traffic by restricting target buses for priority. The effectiveness of this strategy is evaluated using microscopic simulation model, PARAMICS. The results show that this selected signal priority strategy reduces bus travel time and improves regularity of bus headway, compared with fixed signal control. Furthermore, it may regulate bus headway more powerfully and induce less delay to general traffic than nonselected signal priority.