Transit Signal Priority Along a Signalized Arterial: A Passenger-based Approach

This article develops a passenger-based priority for transit buses by balancing the trade-offs between the benefits at major streets and delays on side streets. A rule-based Transit Signal Priority (TSP) is set to assign priority to scheduled-based transit vehicles based on: their schedule adherence, passenger occupancy, and passengers waiting at downstream stops. The minimum number of bus passengers required to receive priority is obtained using deterministic queueing theory for the two cases of green extension and red truncation. VISSIM simulation software is used to evaluate the performance of the developed TSP approach, comparing it with: existing, unconditional, and no-TSP scenarios. This evaluation assessed performance measures for major streets, crossing streets, and the network level. The simulation demonstrated that a passenger-based TSP results in a significant decrease in travel time and side-street delay, compared to existing priority measures (buses will receive priority once every three minutes) on the corridor.