Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Transit Priority Measures

Transit priority measures are devices employed to improve the travel-time reliability and speed competitiveness of transit services relative to general traffic. Investment in transit priority measures can serve other purposes, including the following:

  • Supporting strategic policies, such as urban consolidation, network efficiency, and environmental management (for example, carbon reduction)
  • Improving safety through remediation of conflict points between transit and other modes, particularly pedestrian and cyclist access to transit stops
  • Improving passenger comfort through a more direct, less stop-start service
  • Delivering better network coverage and integration
  • Generating operating and capital cost efficiencies

Plainly, these reasons are not mutually exclusive, and they may singularly or in combination drive an investment decision by transit planning authorities.

Types of Transit Priority Treatment

There are a range of treatments, and these may be grouped according to whether they represent a location-specific point treatment (often at intersections), corridor treatment, or technological investment. The measures are most often applied in locations within an urban road network where there is congestion, with the degree of prioritization dependent on the frequency of bus services and how significant and extensive the congestion is.

By prioritizing transit, authorities may not only reduce service delays and operating costs but leverage more patronage as frustrated drivers identify a relative benefit in using buses. Some priority measures also may only apply at certain times of the day, most commonly during commuter peak travel hours.

Generally, the case for transit prioritization in urban areas across the world is gaining popularity. This reflects the deepening understanding that policy makers have regarding the impacts on productivity associated with traffic congestion and delays. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that congestion cannot be alleviated over the medium and long term through additions to road capacity.

Increasing urban populations and increasing or relatively stable car ownership rates contribute to congestion issues. The need to address the effects of congestion is becoming more evident in developing as well as developed countries, while issues of chronic underinvestment in transit infrastructure in some contexts and its implications become clear. The legacy can include lost productivity, car dependence, and poor air quality.

Overview of Point or Localized Treatments

Typical point treatments include bus queue jump facilities and transit gates or “plugs.” Queue jumps are intended to permit buses to circumvent queues, or lines of traffic, that form at congestion points (typically traffic signal–controlled intersections).

They may also be implemented in partnership with midblock signals to meter traffic and ramp meters at entries to freeways and highways. Queue jumps are effective only if they are of sufficient length to permit a congestion point to be bypassed; if general traffic queues frequently extend back past the entry to the bypass lane, they become ineffective.

On approach to intersections, physical barriers do not usually separate queue jump lanes from adjacent traffic lanes. This is because it is often desirable or a legal requirement to permit turning traffic to enter the queue jump lane, but only a short distance from where a cross street or crossover is located. At intersections, queue jump facilities can be established as either curbside or median lanes, depending on the direction in which transit services need to travel.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution