Traffic Light Priority Systems

616 Words3 Pages
Reliability of public transport systems is considered critically important by public transport users, operators and the public authorities. Lack of reliability and schedule adherence result in an increasing anxiety and discomfort for the passengers which will eventually lead to a lesser use of public transport services. In highly congested cities, during peak hours or under any other heavy traffic event, general traffic has a great impact in the public transport reliability. Among the different initiatives studied by transport authorities to reduce that impact, we find solutions such as the implementation of bus dedicated lines or traffic light priority systems. This article will focus on the later. The traffic light priority systems (TLPS) are designed with the objective of giving priority to the public buses when approaching to a junction by giving a green light on the bus route direction. A TLPS will require an exchange of information between the bus Fleet Management System (FMS) and the Traffic System used in the city or geographical area. Once the communication is established between those systems, the FMS will issue priority requests, either from the servers or directly from the vehicles; once those requests are received at the traffic system, it will evaluate them and decide whether servicing the request and giving the green to the bus or keep the planned traffic light cycle. There are different ways to implement a traffic priority system but they all share a set of requirements that need to be answered: - Schedule adherence assessment, we will not want to issue a priority request if the bus is on time or ahead the schedule. Additionally, some managers would also not want to issue a request when the bus carries a major delay, as it wouldn’t make much difference and the bus would still be behind its schedule. This schedule adherence assessment can
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