An Approach of Transit Passive Priority with Transit Phase Overlapped at Intersection of Arterial Signal Progression

Previous experience has shown that transit responsive signal control has ability to reduce delay of buses in urban areas when compared to traditional fixed-time control at arterial signal progression. However, most of these experiences have focused primarily on the impact on buses or delay per person. This paper describes development and evaluation of transit passive priority with transit phase overlapped (TPPTPO) that explicitly considers impacts of private automobiles. This signal control method is unique in two ways. First, this method explicitly considers the interference caused to the general traffic by transit vehicles waiting for the right of priority. Second, when this method overlaps transit phase to automobiles phase at a certain point, the signal timing of transit phase and split-flash phase that might have potential treatment on automobiles are explicitly quantified to ensure safety of intersection and keep cycle the same. Evaluation of its performance with VISSIM and the calculations of priority control parameters have been conducted and will appear in the literature in the near future.