UC Berkeley

Traffic responsive signal control with Transit Signal Priority (TSP) is a strategy that is increasingly used to improve transit operations in urban networks. However, none of the existing real-time signal control systems have explicitly incorporated the passenger occupancy of transit vehicles in granting priority or have effectively addressed issues such as the provision of priority to transit vehicles traveling in conflicting directions at signalized intersections. The contribution of this dissertation is the development of a person-based traffic responsive signal control system with TSP that minimizes total person delay in a network by explicitly considering all vehicles' passenger occupancy and transit schedule delay. By using such conditions, the issue of assigning priority to transit vehicles traveling in conflicting directions is also addressed in an efficient way. In addition, the impact of these priority strategies on auto traffic is addressed by minimizing the total person delay in the network under consideration and assigning penalties for interrupting the progression of platoons on arterials. The system is first developed for isolated intersections, and then extended to arterial signalized networks. Evaluation tests for a wide range of traffic and transit operating characteristics show that significant reductions in transit passenger delay can be achieved without substantially increasing auto passenger delay. Furthermore, the system achieves lower vehicle delays compared to signal settings obtained by state-of-the-art signal optimization software. Finally, it utilizes readily deployable technologies, which provide real-time information such as sensors, Automated Vehicle Location and Automated Passenger Counter systems and can be implemented on existing infrastructure in urban multimodal networks.