Selective Priority Network Technique SPRINT : active bus priority in fixed time Urban Traffic Control UTC in London.

Active bus priority at traffic signals in London, using selective detection, has been extended recently from isolated signals within Urban Traffic Control (UTC) areas. Facilities for bus priority in SCOOT were developed in the European Commission funded PROMPT project and have been successfully trialled in two London SCOOT regions. While SCOOT is gradually being extended in London, significant areas of fixed time UTC are operational and likely to remain. Bus priority has therefore now been developed for fixed time UTC using a system called SPRINT. The paper initially provides a description of the SPRINT system. This covers the priority actions available, the modelling of buses and other traffic in real-time and the constraints available for the user to control the balance between benefits to buses and possible disbenefits to other traffic. Optimisation and signal response actions are also summarised. The paper then describes the implementation and preliminary evaluation of SPRINT at 8 junctions in a fixed time UTC area on the Uxbridge Road in West London. The implications from this trial, undertaken within the EC funded project INCOME, are discussed alongside other initiatives under way in this project to provide integrated advanced bus priority systems using traffic signalling in London.