Performance of the Priority Control Strategies for Bus Rapid Transit: Comparative Study from Scenario Microsimulation Using VISSIM

Bus rapid transit (BRT) has a great potential to improve the service level of transit system and has been implemented in many Chinese cities. However, the priority it can provide to buses has not been explored fully. Therefore, this study mainly investigated two advanced control strategies (signal priority using advanced detection and transit speed control). Signal priority using advanced detection is a strategy which detects one cycle ahead of buses’ arrival in order to adapt a more flexible control algorithm to provide signal priority for buses. Another is transit speed control, which provides priority at intersections for buses by controlling the speed of them and predicting their arrival at certain intersection. These two advanced strategies were modeled and evaluated using simulation software VISSIM and presented better performance than other three scenarios (base case, exclusive bus lane, and conventional transit signal priority). Only the eastbound direction would be researched as its traffic flow and bus volume are much larger than those of the other direction. Data used in this model was collected in Yingtan City. It is also shown that both the operation of BRT and the efficiency of private traffic can be much improved by applying the two strategies proposed above.