Comprehensive evaluation on transit signal priority system impacts using field observed traffic data (Phase One)

Details

• Creators:
  Wang, Yinhai ; Zheng, Jianyang ; Zhang, Guohui
• Corporate Creators:
  Transportation Northwest Regional Center X (TransNow) (UTC)
• Corporate Contributors:
  United States. Federal Highway Administration ; University of Washington
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Bus Priority Field Tests Impact Studies Public Transit Traffic Data Traffic Signal Preemption Traffic Simulation
• Publication/ Report Number:
  TNW2006-10;61-0802
• Resource Type:
  Research Paper
• Geographical Coverage:
  Washington
• Edition:
  Final report
• Corporate Publisher:
  Transportation Northwest (TransNow) UTC
• Abstract:
  To improve the level of Community Transit (CT) services, the South Snohomish Regional Transit Signal Priority (SS-RTSP) project has been launched. To understand the overall benefit of this project, the SS-RTSP system (phase one) was tested and evaluated after the completion of the hardware and software installations on the 164th Street SW street corridor in Snohomish County, Washington State. In this study, impacts of the SS-RTSP system on both transit and local traffic operations were quantitatively evaluated based on field observed data. A simulation model was also built and calibrated to compute measures of effectiveness that cannot be obtained from field-observed data. With the simulation model and field observed data, the impacts of the SS-RTSP system on both transit and local traffic operations were quantitatively evaluated. Our evaluation results showed that the SS-RTSP system introduced noticeable benefits to transit vehicles, with insignificant negative impacts to local traffic on cross streets. The overall impact of the SS-RTSP system on local traffic of the whole intersection was net benefit. To improve the performance of the current SS-RTSP system, more transit vehicles can be enabled for transit signal priority (TSP) eligibility. The average number of granted TSP trips was only 16.96 per day per intersection during the test. Considering that negative impacts of the SS-RTSP on local traffic were not significant, more transit trips can be granted with proper TSP treatment to generate more benefits from the SS-RTSP system. Also, near-side bus stops were found to introduce extra transit delays when TSP was on under certain conditions. Our recommendation is that the TSP treatment of extended green may be disabled at intersections with near-side bus stops to avoid introducing negative impacts on transit vehicles. /Abstract from report summary page/
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  DTRS99-G-0010
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:877569425477faef6d061af721eb2710bd12be82a9547c66a16d69a033030fbbaaa13c5e7cddec3683abfbe53783fcaa024cdd98d8cac19f86ed8494c3b44782
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/5590/dot_5590_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.22 MB ]