Journal of Korean Society of Transportation ISSN:1229-1366(Print) 2234-4217(Online) 대한교통학회지

In the current era of sustainable transport, buses were considered one of the eco-friendly means, as an alternative to the efficient use of roads. However, arterial is passenger car-oriented signal operations, and buses are frequently stopped due to different driving characteristics from passenger cars. Various bus signal priorities have been developed so far, but there is a possibility to have a negative effect on passenger cars. Thus, this study designs STEPBAND, a signal coordination method that takes into account the driving patterns of buses and ensures the continuous progression of passenger cars. STEPBAND divides the Signal coordination group (BUS-SA) into bus stops, taking into account the fact that buses always stop at the bus stop for passengers to get on and off, and then maximizes the two-way bandwidth on a BUS-SA basis using the MAXBAND LP2 model, a traditional two-way bandwidth maximization methodology. To evaluate the effectiveness of STEPBAND, we compared optimal signals produced by STEPBAND and MAXBAND LP2 models using simulations. The result shows that STEPBAND yields lower delays for both passenger cars and buses compared to conventional models. This study secured differentiation in that all transportation using the bandwidth of BUS-SA can be driven from the upstream to the downstream bus stop at free speed without stopping. It is expected that it will be able to be used as a more efficient way to operate signals when considering flow that has failed to use bandwidth in the future.