Measures for prioritizing urban public transport using SUMO – A corridor in Münster, Germany
In order for public transport to be perceived as attractive and accepted by society, it is important that it is reliable and fast, thus providing an alternative to the car.
In urban environments with congested traffic, it is therefore beneficial to prioritize public transport over private transport. There are several concepts to achieve this, but their effectiveness has to be evaluated for each new case individually.
We investigated a corridor in Münster, Germany, with delays and congestion especially in the morning peak hours. An analysis of the status quo bus travel times revealed that the most delays occur at two adjacent junctions and in between, so we developed measures that focus on this section. The measures include conventional bus lanes or green time modifications, but also intelligent methods based on real-time traffic data such as intermittent bus lanes or special phases at traffic signals which are activated when a bus approaches.
The measures are implemented in SUMO to evaluate their impact and to identify the most effective measure. The logic of the measures is implemented in Python code, which analyses the bus positions, the traffic situation and the traffic signal states provided by SUMO’s TraCI interface. TraCI is also used to modify the simulation, e.g. change the allowed vehicle classes in the case of the intermittent bus lanes, or change the signal programs in the case of the special phases for buses.
The results show a reduction in bus travel time by 59 % with a combination of an intermittent bus lane and special phases. Furthermore, the standard deviation of bus travel times can be significantly reduced, which increases reliability. The effect of the bus prioritization on the remaining traffic strongly depends on the frequency of the buses.
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