Title: A supply-demand model for communication of transit signal priority requests

Authors: Chin-Woo Tan, Meng Li, Sungsu Park, Hongchao Liu, Peter Lau, Qing Xu

Addresses: California PATH, University of California, Berkeley, 1357 South 46th Street, Richmond, CA 94804, USA. ' California PATH, University of California, Berkeley, 1357 South 46th Street, Richmond, CA 94804, USA. ' Department of Aerospace Engineering, Sejong University, 98 Kunja-dong, Kwangjin-ku, Seoul, Korea. ' Multidisciplinary Center in Transportation, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, M.S. 41023, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-1023, USA. ' California PATH, University of California, Berkeley, 1357 South 46th Street, Richmond, CA 94804, USA. ' PINC Solutions, 2095 Rose Street, Berkeley, CA 94709, USA

Abstract: A critical issue encountered in implementing a transit signal priority system is to ensure that communication between transit vehicles and the traffic centre can be established for transmitting signal priority requests and vehicle arrival time information needed for executing signal priority control at signal-controlled intersections. The available communication channel bandwidth, however, is not guaranteed to meet the demand from a potentially large number of transit vehicles requesting signal priority service. In this paper, we define and analyse this supply-demand problem with simulations of a simple time model. The emphasis is to investigate the logistic issues and identify the critical parameters, so that this simple model might serve as a framework for constructing a more complex realistic model upon which an efficient scheduling protocol could be designed to meet signal priority service demand.

Keywords: vehicle arrival time; signal priority request; channel process rate; process priority; process queue; supply–demand analysis; transit signals; vehicle communication; priority control; signal-controlled intersections; scheduling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVICS.2008.022357

International Journal of Vehicle Information and Communication Systems, 2008 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.249 - 267

Published online: 02 Jan 2009 *

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