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Abstract- Public transport has an important role to play in the provision of reliable travel in congested conditions as it makes excellent use of limited road space, carrying many more passengers than a private car for a given amount of road space. This paper involves study and analysis of various Bus Priority Measures in terms of change in delay with respect to normal intersection for the buses and also for whole traffic flow (including buses and all other vehicles) with the help of results of VISSIM simulation software for various volumes of traffic flow. These measures can be applied to give buses priority to make them a more attractive alternative to the private vehicles and reducing road congestion.
Index Terms - Bus Priority, Queue Jump Lane, Exclusive Bus Lane, Microscopic Simulation, Heterogeneous Traffic
I. INTRODUCTION
The road network needs to move people and goods efficiently if we are to ensure the social and economic wellbeing of our communities. The capacity of our roads has not increased at anything like this rate and this has led to severe traffic congestion. This requires encouragement of public transport modes like buses. A bus may carry twenty times as many passengers as a car, yet it only contributes three times as much to congestion (CCMS, TRRL, UK, 1976). But due to large size of buses compared to other vehicles and increasing congestion buses cause delay and inconvenience which makes bus transit less appealing to passengers. This requires giving bus priority over other vehicles.
II. BUS PRIORITY MEASURES
Bus Priority Measures are techniques used to give buses priority over general traffic. Priority measures are the collective term used for a range of traffic management measures where the delays and unreliability to public transport caused by physical constraints and other vehicles are removed or significantly reduced. The major benefits of bus priority measures are: reduced delay due to elimination of friction between buses and other traffic, improved reliability and regularity of bus service, improved bus utilization, reduced bus operating cost, effective utilization of available road space and reduced accident rates. Some of the methods of bus priority which are discussed and studied in this paper are given below:
A. DOUBLE QUEUE JUMP LANES FOR BUSES (BUS PRIORITY1)
Along with...