Centralised Bus Priority System

Centralised Bus Priority System utilises a real-time data feed of bus position & performance data and the existing traffic signal management & communications infrastructure to provide real-time bus priority city wide.

Project Overview

For sustainable transportation measures, public transportation services have shown to be the most effective and Dublin City Council is committed to improving such services. In achieving this commitment, Dublin City Council provides city wide bus priority via a Centralised Bus Priority System that can monitor the progress of buses in service through the city and provide bus priority by interfacing with the Traffic Signal Management System.

There are currently 300 plus such locations configured for automated bus priority throughout the city.

The User Interface is a map based indicating road sections in blue where bus priority has been configured.

The yellow Dublin Bus icons are a mapping in real-time of buses in services for that specific moment.

Thus it is no long necessary to have specialised equipment on the street for bus priority as this centralised system is indirectly connected to the existing networking infrastructure of 800 plus traffic signals. This innovated data driven application along with the bus position data and business intelligence visualisation tools provides a means of providing bus priority and a quantifiable means of measuring the improvements to the bus service.

Project Objectives

In combination with Business intelligence tools and data visualisations this provides the opportunity to review the performance of a corridor and bring in effective automated adjusted to traffic signals at strategic locations in order to provide a consistent level of service for public transportation.

Project Implementation & Methodology

As presented below, the bus position data can be mapped thus highlighting congestion for a specific time. (The closer the bus position data points, the slower the bus’ progression). Using the Centralised Bus Priority client, this area can be highlighted by the application and configured so that when bus data coordinates are within these configured shapes, the system dynamically interfaces with the traffic signals via SCATS for bus priority in a specific direction. And so the call for more green time, either extended green time or an immediate green signal can be given to the approaching bus.

The key element is the real time data feed containing the bus position data, that not only drives the Centralised System by provide an evidence based approach on improvements to the service. The improvements to the services from this intervention are shown below, the bus stop to bus stop journey time report.

For more details see. http://www.nicander.co.uk/contracts/dublin-ptim/