Page 32 - Trafficinfratech Magazine April 2023 Digital Edition

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Effective Management of

Transportation Systems

Bus priority at signalized intersection

The recent rise in vehicle ownership without a
corresponding rise in infrastructure has resulted in long
delays and congestion have become a problem all over
the world. An inefficient urban transportation system
increases energy consumption, travel time, travel
costs, traffic congestion and air pollution. Therefore, it
is necessary to develop and manage transportation
systems more effectively through better utilization
of the current infrastructure, states Dr. Lelitha Devi

Vanajakshi, MoRTH Chair Professor - Transportation
Engineering Division, Department of Civil Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

or a fast- growing performance, bus priority at BSP can be a conditional priority.
economy like India, signalized intersection has the One such solution is developed by
traffic congestion is potential to reduce delays and transportation researchers from
one of the biggest queues at signals thereby reducing IIT Madras with funding from
challenges. The methods bus travel times in urban arterials. the Ministry of Electronics and
Fto reduce congestion can Bus signal priority (BSP) system is an Information Technology (MeitY),
be an intervention that requires operational strategy that modifies Government of India, which gives
low capital investment such as normal traffic signal operations priority to buses only when there is
demand management measures to better accommodate in-service an overall reduction in total person
or an infrastructure expansion public transport buses at signalised delay, considering all vehicles. The
that requires public and/or private intersections. Such BSP strategies developed system will minimize
sector investment. However, have not been practiced or total person delay by providing
these solutions can only provide a documented anywhere in India, may priority to public transport buses,
temporary relief until the induced be due to non-availability of reliable either through Green extension (GE)
demand fills up the road space data sources and communication or Red truncation (RT), considering
again. One of the most effective from public transport buses. all vehicles approaching a signalized
solutions to reduce congestion is to The existing solutions that were intersection.
promote public transport because developed and tested for the The data requirement of the
of its high occupancy compared to lane based homogeneous traffic available BSP solutions is high and
personal vehicles. As a result, the cannot perform well for the traffic are computationally intense. The
relevance of public transportation conditions in India, which is a bus priority algorithm developed
as a medium capable of providing heterogeneous mix moving without by IIT Madras uses sampled Wi-Fi
sustainable mobility has grown. any lane discipline.
data, making it less data intensive.
Out of the various measures for Unlike a blind priority that is Moreover, the current study
improving the public transportation given for emergency vehicles, develops analytical expressions,

32 TrafficInfraTech / April 2023 / www.trafficinfratech-com-500653.hostingersite.com