Headway-based multi-route transit signal priority at isolated intersection

Abstract

This article advances the issue of Transit Signal Priority (TSP) control by introducing an application to multi-route bus conflicting requests, capitalizing on the headways and improved total delay of a multi-route bus network. The headway-based TSP accommodating conflicting requests overcomes the shortcoming by the traditional ''First Arrival, First Serve'' strategy and presents significant improvement on bus service performance. According to the bus arrival time, expected headway, and headway deviation value, we establish an optimal signal control model which aiming to minimize the deviation between the bus headway and the expected headway. The case study analysis conducts three schemes: background cycle-based TSP, total delay-based TSP, and headway deviation-based TSP. The performance of headway-based TSP is compared against other two schemes under three different intersection scenarios. The results show that the headway-based TSP has the best effect on improving and balancing the headway stability and distribution. Compared with the scheme of background cycle and the minimum total bus delay, the bus headway deviation is decreased by 42.05% and 28.64% respectively. Compared with the scheme of background cycle, the bus parking delay time is decreased by 36%.