Safety Evaluation of Transit Signal Priority with Bus Speed Volatility as a Surrogate Measure: Case Study in Minnesota
Publication: International Conference on Transportation and Development 2021
ABSTRACT
Previous studies have found correlations between the implementation of transit signal priority (TSP) and the reduction in number of crashes. To further understand how TSP affects traffic safety, a more in-depth evaluation was carried out using detailed bus automatic vehicle location (AVL) data. The data were from Minneapolis-Saint Paul Metro Transit Bus Route 5, where TSP was implemented at 30 signalized intersections in early 2019. A surrogate safety measure, bus speed volatility (BSV), was used to estimate TSP’s safety effects, with a higher BSV indicating more safety risks. A regression analysis was carried out on 23,123 event-level observations, with event defined as a bus traversal of a TSP-equipped intersection. Results indicate that with a TSP request, BSV was significantly lower than without a TSP request, confirming TSP’s effectiveness in smoothing bus trips through intersections, thus reducing risks of bus collisions and passenger fall-overs.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENCES
Arvin, R., Kamrani, M., and Khattak, A. J. (2019). “How instantaneous driving behavior contributes to crashes at intersections: Extracting useful information from connected vehicle message data.” Accident Analysis & Prevention, 127, 118–133.
Boonsiripant, S. (2009). “Speed profile variation as a surrogate measure of road safety based on GPS-equipped vehicle data.” Georgia Institute of Technology.
Danaher, A. R., Blume, K., Levinson, H. S., and Zimmerman, S. (2007). : Bus Rapid Transit Practitioner’s Guide. Transportation Research Board.
Davis, G. A. (2001). “Using Bayesian Networks to Identify the Causal Effect of Speeding in Individual Vehicle/Pedestrian Collisions.” Proceedings of the Seventeenth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI2001).
Davis, G. A., Hourdos, J., Xiong, H., and Chatterjee, I. (2011). “Outline for a causal model of traffic conflicts and crashes.” Accident Analysis & Prevention, 43(6), 1907–1919.
EMTRAC. (2017). “Transit Signal Priority (TSP) System.”
Goh, K. C. K., Currie, G., Sarvi, M., and Logan, D. (2013). “Road Safety Benefits from Bus Priority: An Empirical Study.” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2352(1), 41–49.
Goh, K. C. K., Currie, G., Sarvi, M., and Logan, D. (2014). “Bus accident analysis of routes with/without bus priority.” Accident Analysis & Prevention, 65, 18–27.
Hayes, A. (2020). “Coefficient of Variation (CV) Definition.” Investopedia, <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/coefficientofvariation.asp> (Nov. 7, 2020).
Johnsson, C., Laureshyn, A., and Ceunynck, T. D. (2018). “In search of surrogate safety indicators for vulnerable road users: a review of surrogate safety indicators.” Transport Reviews, Routledge, 38(6), 765–785.
Kachroo, P., and Sharma, A. (2018). “Theory of safety surrogates using vehicle trajectories in macroscopic and microscopic settings: Application to dynamic message signs controlled traffic at work zones.” Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 91, 62–76.
Kamrani, M., Arvin, R., and Khattak, A. J. (2018). “Extracting Useful Information from Basic Safety Message Data: An Empirical Study of Driving Volatility Measures and Crash Frequency at Intersections.” Transportation Research Record, SAGE Publications Inc, 2672(38), 290–301.
Kassambara, A. (2018). “Linear Regression Assumptions and Diagnostics in R: Essentials.” Machine Learning Essentials: Practical Guide in R.
Kennedy, P. (2008). A guide to econometrics. John Wiley & Sons.
Li, L., Persaud, B., and Shalaby, A. (2017). “Using micro-simulation to investigate the safety impacts of transit design alternatives at signalized intersections.” Accident Analysis & Prevention, 100, 123–132.
Moreno, A. T., and García, A. (2013). “Use of speed profile as surrogate measure: Effect of traffic calming devices on crosstown road safety performance.” Accident Analysis & Prevention, Emerging Research Methods and Their Application to Road Safety, 61, 23–32.
Naznin, F., Currie, G., Sarvi, M., and Logan, D. (2016). “An empirical bayes safety evaluation of tram/streetcar signal and lane priority measures in Melbourne.” Traffic Injury Prevention, 17(1), 91–97.
Peesapati, L. N., Hunter, M., Rodgers, M., and Guin, A. (2011). “A profiling based approach to safety surrogate data collection.” The 3rd International Conference on Road Safety and Simulation.
Porter, R. J., Himes, S., Musunuru, A., Le, T., Eccles, K., Peach, K., Tasic, I., Zlatkovic, M., Tatineni, K., and Duffy, B. (2018). Understanding the Causative, Precipitating, and Predisposing Factors in Rural Two-Lane Crashes. United States. Federal Highway Administration.
Shahla, F., Shalaby, A. S., Persaud, B. N., and Hadayeghi, A. (2009). “Analysis of Transit Safety at Signalized Intersections in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2102(1), 108–114.
Song, Y., and Noyce, D. (2018). “Assessing Effects of Transit Signal Priority on Traffic Safety: Empirical Bayes Before–After Study using King County, Washington, Data.” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2672(8), 10–18.
Song, Y., and Noyce, D. (2019). “Effects of transit signal priority on traffic safety: Interrupted time series analysis of Portland, Oregon, implementations.” Accident Analysis & Prevention, 123, 291–302.
Song, Y., Zlatkovic, M., and Porter, R. J. (2016a). “Evaluation of GPS-Based Transit Signal Priority for Mixed-Traffic Bus Rapid Transit.” Transportation Research Record, SAGE Publications Inc, 2539(1), 30–39.
Song, Y., Zlatkovic, M., and Porter, R. J. (2016b). “A Corridor-Level Evaluation of GPS-Based Transit Signal Priority.” International Conference on Transportation and Development 2016, American Society of Civil Engineers, 455–466.
Wali, B., Khattak, A. J., Bozdogan, H., and Kamrani, M. (2018). “How is driving volatility related to intersection safety? A Bayesian heterogeneity-based analysis of instrumented vehicles data.” Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 92, 504–524.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Jun 4, 2021
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.