There have been a variety of bus priority measures used for at least 25 years throughout the world. Bus lanes and traffic signal priority are the most common forms of bus priority, and these systems can provide significant travel time savings for congested arterial roads. This paper presents the main findings regarding evidence from past work and places the topic in the wider transport planning context. The analysis of the various treatments will focus on reducing travel time for buses, which is fundamentally linked to the cost and efficiency of this form of public transport. The work undertaken considers the travel time savings obtained for buses and the associated impacts on the remainder of the general purpose traffic to minimise the person delay through the network. The inclusion of other parameters that may affect the justification of bus priority measures, such as vehicle costs and the environmental costs, is a logical extension of this research. This paper recommends that bus priority treatments be part of an overall traffic management strategy for a transport corridor. It is suggested that there may be significant travel time savings associated with bus priority treatments. However, to obtain these benefits with manageable impacts on other traffic, the type and nature of the bus priority treatments need to be matched to the road and traffic conditions. This will ensure that the efficiency of the road infrastructure is maximised for each traffic management strategy. (a).
Abstract