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Bus Priority Strategies And Impact Scenarios Developed On A Large Urban Area

Objectif

PRISCILLA aims to facilitate the rapid take-up of experiences and know-how gained in the previous RTD projects related to bus priority systems concerning single junctions or bus priority- corridors and gather still missing knowledge on effects and impacts in wide networks (100-300 buses, 80-130 intersections, city centre and suburbs).
PRISCILLA's objective is to take up the existing practices, demonstrating the benefits of best practice adoption through a limited (8 months) experiment conducted following a structured evaluation plan. Particular attention is on the dissemination of the "Best practice guide for PT priority in Europe" that will result from the evaluation of the measurement phase in order to transfer experiences among EU members and towards CEEC countries facilitating the deployment of bus priority in cities and regions that wish to implement a new priority system or to enlarge this from a small scale implementation (few buses, few intersections) to an urban area.

Objectives:
In current practice bus priority scheme at traffic signals have been implemented in several cities in Europe and results have been achieved especially concerning single junctions or bus priority-corridors; but there is still a lack of knowledge regarding the effects of a generalised management of the priority functions on the traffic in a dense public/private transport network.
Therefore bus priority cannot be yet considered to be fully mature in large urban areas.

PRISCILLA's main objective is to take up the existing bus priority practices and improve them for wide networks (100-300 buses, 80-130 junctions) by adapting technology and processes, testing different control objectives (bus speed, bus regularity), evaluating main impacts, demonstrating benefits and disseminating best practice adoption.

Work description:
PRISCILLA is a 20-months project carried out by 2 Public Transport Operators (Genoa-I, Toulouse-F), 4 Local Authorities (Southampton, Hampshire-UK, Toulouse-F), 2 industrial suppliers (Elsag-I, Siemens-UK), 2 research centres (University of Southampton- UK, ZELT-F) and 1 National Public Transport Association (URTP-Romania).

The project starts with a worldwide review of current status establishing the state-of-the-art of public transport priority systems at traffic signals, concerning systems, strategies, performance and factors affecting success; the results of this review will be a first input to the "Best Practice Guide".
The review will give also specific inputs to the evaluation plan (objectives, indicators, methods of measurement, statistical consideration). The evaluation plan will be led by ZELT and based on 3 different categories: impacts evaluation, user's acceptance and Cost-Benefit Analysis. For the impacts evaluation the indicators will be representative of the variation of bus commercial speed, bus regularity and private cars speed; the 12 steps method and the Converge methodology will be used.
Concerning user acceptance, PRISCILLA will focus on the "professional users" working with the system (bus drivers, UTC operators, Public Transport Operators); after a first stage of experimentation a local workshop will be held to collect their opinion and suggestions. The Cost Benefit Analysis will be conducted from the point of view of the Public Transport Operators.

After the necessary technological and organisational preparation and following the evaluation methodology, the involved sites will carry out similar types of trials (8 months of measurements) in order to collect and analyse data and to compare results. The 8 months will be subdivided in 8 different periods in which all the evaluation indicators will be measured without bus priority and with bus priority following two different objectives (increase bus speed, increase regularity).

The evaluation results will be the main input for the dissemination phase, focused on the "best practice guide for PT priority" and targeted at local level, at EU level (Web project report, POLIS network activities, special issue on the POLIS newsletter, "outside user consultation" during the POLIS annual conference in Prague (November 2000), special session concerning bus priority during the annual POLIS conference in year 2001), and at Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) level (a dedicated workshop during the URBEXPO exhibition in Bucharest (December 2000), a special session during a CEEC dedicated event, translation of the main results in the main CEEC languages).

Milestones:
The technical result of the project is to improve the actual state of the art regarding bus priority schemes in Europe, gaining knowledge especially in terms of wide network application strategies.
Main milestones of the project are the production of the worldwide Public Transport priority state of the art review, the beginning and the end of the measurement phase and the evaluation of the related results. The business result is "how the knowledge gained will be transferred and exploited" mainly based on the BEST PRACTICE GUIDE produced in order to disseminate the ideal set up of operation of the systems / strategies developed, targeted to the communities sharing the need to adopt wide area bus priority strategies (policy makers, PT companies, Urban Traffic Control and Bus Control Centre operators, bus drivers).

Appel à propositions

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Coordinateur

AZIENDA MOBILITA E TRASPORTI S.P.A.
Contribution de l’UE
Aucune donnée
Adresse
VIA MONTALDO 2
16137 GENOVA
Italie

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Participants (9)