Network-wide Optimization of Locations of

the Transit Priority Applications

Murat Bayrak

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Outline

• Introduction
• Methods in Literature
• Research Goals
• Methodology
• Location Optimization of Dedicated Bus Lanes
• Location Optimization of Transit Signal Priority
• Future work

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Introduction

• Congestion have been steadily increasing

for the past two decades.
• There are two ways to look at congestion
problem
• Capacity is insufficient
• Demand is too high.

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Introduction

• This need of a reliable alternative mode can be

met with subways, trams and trains in large
urban areas
• But bus transit is still main transit mode for
many cities
• To make bus transit more efficient and reliable
transit priority strategies can be used

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Introduction

• Depending on the location of application

transit priority strategies can increase delay for
other vehicles
• Change the route selection behavior
• Lead to a modal shift
• Can cause a queue spillover
• All these effects are large scale effects

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Literature Review – Transit Priority Strategies

• Commonly used transit priority strategies are:

• Dedicated bus lanes
• Benefits evaluated at the intersection, arterial and network levels
• Studies look at how the implementation of bus lanes would impact car and bus travel times
using analytical and simulation studies[1][2]
• Transit signal priority
• Benefits evaluated at the intersection and arterial level, only one study considers the network
level
• Methods used include analytical and simulation [3]
• Network level only evaluated using simulation [4]
• Some other novel strategies exist:
• Intermittent bus lanes
• Benefits evaluated at the arterial levels
• Methods used include analytical and simulation [5][6]

12/13/2018 [1] Arasan and Vedagiri, 2010 [2] Gan et al., 2003 [3] Christofa and Skabardonis, 2011 6
[4] Ahn and Rakha, 2006 [5] Zyryanov and Mironchuk, 2011 [6] Zhu, 2010
Literature Review – Location Selection at Network
Level

• Transit signal priority

• No existing studies
• Intermittent bus lanes
• No existing studies
• Dedicated bus lanes
• A recent line of studies approached the problem as a combinatorial
optimization problem [1][2][3]
• Almost all these studies use bi-level optimization approach
• Lower level represents decision-making of people in the network
• Upper level represents the decision-making of the transportation agency

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[1] Mesbah et al. 2010 [2] Saeednia et al., 2015 [3] Yu et al. 2015
Literature Review – Bilevel Optimization

• Lower level aims to determine the total travel time on the network given a
certain transit priority location setting
• All studies use a similar lower level algorithm
1. Travel time estimation using BPR or Akcelik function
2. Traffic assignment with a user equilibrium model based on travel times found in
step 1
3. Modal split using travel times found in step 1
4. Repeat step 1-3 until modal split values converge
• This approach has some problems
• Cost functions used for travel time estimation (BPR or Akcelik) in user equilibrium
model are not valid for saturated traffic
• It is not possible to model dynamic signal delay
• Impact of possible queue spillovers cannot be accounted with this model

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Literature Review – Bilevel Optimization

• The upper level algorithm considers different possible transit priority

location combinations to optimize the total network travel time
• For upper level problem different optimization methods are used:
• Branch and bound method
• Bender’s decomposition
• Artificial immune system algorithm
• Genetic algorithm
• Studies in the literature focused on the computational efficiency and
the accuracy of the upper-level optimization.
• However, without an accurate lower level algorithm, the accuracy of
the upper-level solution becomes questionable.
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Research Goals

1. Develop a lower level methodology that is capable of accounting for

the impacts of queue spillover, dynamic route choices, and dynamic
mode choice behavior in a computationally efficient manner.
2. Finding the most suitable optimization algorithm for the upper level
problem
3. Developing a methodology to find the optimum application
sequence of the transit priority strategies.

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Methodology - Overview
Upper Level
Select transit priority strategy locations

Lower Level
Determine initial user equilibrium

Estimate travel times

Link
Mode Choice Transmission
Model
Route Choice

Calculate total travel time

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Evaluate transit priority strategy locations 11
Lower Level – Algorithm Inputs

• Network configuration: nodes, links, link lengths, jam density,

capacity etc.
• Bus network configuration: bus routes, transit priority locations
• Total trip demand between each origin and destination pair

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Lower Level – Initial User Equilibrium

• For user equilibrium model, BPR function is used as a the cost

function
𝑥𝑙 4
𝑡𝑡𝑙 = 𝑡𝑡0 1 + 0.15
𝐶
• User equilibrium problem is solved using Frank-Wolfe algorithm
• The initial route choices are obtained

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Lower Level – Link Transmission Model

• The link transmission model is used to estimate total travel

time of the network users
• The link transmission model reduces the network to nodes
and links
• For our work we consider each roadway connecting two
intersections to be comprised of 2 links with a node in the middle.
These middle nodes are the origins and destinations :Origin and Destinations
• Each intersection is also a node :Intersections

• The link transmission model determines the flow of vehicles

from links to links, considering turning movements at nodes
while obeying kinematic wave theory
• Traffic is propagated at discrete time steps

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Lower Level – Estimate Car Flows

• The link transmission model has a sending and receiving flow function
for each node
• The sending flow: Maximum number of vehicles can leave a link
• Link capacity
• Upstream traffic conditions
• The receiving flow: Maximum number of vehicles can enter a link
• Link capacity
• Jam density
• At the intersections signals are modeled by reducing the sending flow
to 0 for the duration of red signal

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Lower Level – Estimate Car Travel Times

• Link travel times of cars are estimated from Upstream

Cumulative number
Downstream
𝑡1 : entry time
downstream and upstream cumulative vehicle 𝑡2 : exit time

diagrams of links.
Car travel time

• Then link travel times are used to calculate 𝑡1 𝑡2

Time

travel time between each origin and destination

pair
• It is assumed that travel time between OD pairs are 1𝑚𝑖𝑛 3𝑚𝑖𝑛
equal to sum of the link travel times of the shortest 𝑗
2𝑚𝑖𝑛 4𝑚𝑖𝑛
path between OD pair
5𝑚𝑖𝑛 1𝑚𝑖𝑛

4𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝑖 2𝑚𝑖𝑛
4+5+2+1=12min
𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑗 = 10𝑚𝑖𝑛
2+1+4+3=10min

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Lower Level – Estimate Bus Travel Times

• Bus flows are not exclusively modelled in LTM

• For links without dedicated bus lanes. It is assumed that link travel time of bus and car is equal
• For links with dedicated bus lanes, since busses can travel faster than cars, we cannot use
cumulative diagrams
• Implemented tracking algorithm:
• At each time step, the upstream cumulative vehicle count for that time step is marked as a bus
• After free flow travel time bus reaches to the downstream intersection
• The marked number is updated with the downstream
cumulative number
• When the downstream cumulative number changes it is Upstream

Cumulative number
Downstream
assumed that bus has left the link 𝑛 : initial bus number 0

• Bus travel times between each OD pair is estimated with 𝑛0 𝑛1 : updated bus number
𝑡0 : free-flow travel time
𝑛1
the same assumption used for car travel times Travel time

𝑡 𝑡+𝑡0 Time

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Lower Level – Route and Mode Choice

• At every signal cycle, route and mode choice is updated

• For mode choice, a logit model is used
exp 𝑈𝑚
• 𝑃𝑚 = σ𝑀 exp 𝑈𝑚
• 𝑈𝑃𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝐶𝑎𝑟 = −𝑇𝑇𝑐𝑎𝑟
• 𝑈𝐵𝑢𝑠 = −𝑇𝑇𝑏𝑢𝑠
• For route choice, all car demand between an OD pair is assigned to
the shortest route
• Since route choice is updated frequently, we assume that the all-or-nothing
assignment will yield a near user equilibrium assignment.

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Lower Level – Calculate Total Travel Time

• At the end of LTM run total travel time of network users is calculated
for upper level optimization
• The last 15 minutes of the simulation is assumed to be representative of
converged mode choice and route choice
• For the last 15 minutes:
• The car total travel time is calculated by considering the cumulative entry and
exit diagrams of the network determined at the origins and destinations
• The bus travel time is calculated from total bus demand between each OD
pair and in-vehicle bus travel time between each OD pair

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Upper Level – Genetic Algorithm

• Genetic algorithm is a global search algorithm that used for many

combinatorial optimization problems
Example chromosome structure
• The steps of the used genetic algorithm are: 1
4
1) Generate a population of chromosomes 1
0
2) Evaluate each chromosome using lower level 3
0
3) Select parent for reproduction 5 6
2
7 8 1
1
4) Create offspring 0
1
Evaluate offspring for diversity 0
Diversity management
Links with bus lanes
5) Evaluate offspring using lower level
6) Select chromosomes to be included in the next generation

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Upper Level – Select Parent and Create Offspring

• Parent selection and creation of offspring are the main steps that
guide the algorithm to a better solution.
• For parent selection a tournament selection procedure is used to
create a balanced selection probability among parent candidates.
• To create offspring chromosomes, reduced surrogate crossover
method is used to decrease the probability of producing offspring
identical to the one of the parents

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Upper Level – Generate Next Generation

• Keeping a sufficiently diverse population is essential for the

effectiveness of parent selection and offspring creation.
• To keep the population diverse, at each generation diversity of the
offspring generation is checked.
• If the offspring is diverse, the new parents are generated by:
• Combining the parents and offspring
• Selecting the best half based on fitness score
• If the offspring is not sufficiently diverse and the best solution has not
improved for 10 generations:
• Half of the offspring chromosomes (selected based on diversity metric) are replaced with
randomly generated chromosomes to create parents for next generation

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Location Optimization of Dedicated Bus Lanes

• 84 OD pair and 336 links

• Origins and destinations are
located at the middle of each link
• Each intersection is a signalized
intersection with 90 sec cycle
length
• Links have same length, and free
flow speed
• For links with DBL, capacity and
jam density are 1500 veh/hr and
155 veh/km
• For links without DBL, capacity and
jam density are 3000 veh/hr and
310 veh/km

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Tested Demand Patterns

Morning peak Evening peak Uniform

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List of Tested Scenarios and Used Methods
Genetic algorithm
Genetic Enumeration with
Demand Pattern and the Network with symmetry
algorithm symmetry constraint
constraint
1stst network – Saturated uniform demand √ √
1stst network – Saturated evening peak demand √
1stst network – Saturated morning peak demand √
2nd network – Saturated uniform demand √ √
2nd network – Saturated evening peak demand √
2nd network – Saturated morning peak demand √
1st network – Undersaturated uniform demand √
1st network – Undersaturated Saturated evening peak
√
demand
1st network – Undersaturated Saturated morning peak
√
demand
2nd network – Undersaturated Saturated uniform demand √
2nd network – Undersaturated Saturated evening peak
√
demand
2nd network – Undersaturated Saturated morning peak
√
demand

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Genetic Algorithm – Uniform Saturated Demand

Total travel Total bus travel Total car travel Mode share of Mode share
time (hr) time (hr) time (hr) bus (%) of car (%)
No bus lane 664.4
664.4 277.4 387.0 42.3%
42.3% 57.7%
57.7%
Optimum
configuration 656.2
656.2 260.4 395.8 42.4%
42.4% 57.6%
57.6%
Full buslane 920.9
920.9 234.0 687.0 42.8%
42.8% 57.2%
57.2%

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Enumeration of symmetric configurations

4
9 3
5 4
5 10 11 12
4 5 6
8 2

4 5 5
7 1
4

• Possible bus lane locations are reduced to 12 symmetrical sets.

• Each set contains 4 bus lane locations
• All 4096 possible bus lane configurations are enumerated for all three
demand patterns.
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 Enumeration – Uniform Demand

Total travel Total bus Total car travel Mode share of Mode share of Total travel Total bus Total car travel Mode share of Mode share of
time (hr) travel time (hr) time (hr) bus (%) car (%) time (hr) travel time (hr) time (hr) bus (%) car (%)
No bus lane 664.4 277.4 387.0 42.3% 57.7% No bus lane 664.4 277.4 387.0 42.3% 57.7%
Optimum Optimum
configuration 647.3
647.3 257.7 389.7 42.5% 57.5% configuration 656.2
656.2 260.4 395.8 42.4% 57.6%
Full buslane 920.5 233.6 687.0 42.8% 57.2% Full buslane 920.9 234.0 687.0 42.8% 57.2%

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 Enumeration – Morning Peak Demand

Total travel Total bus Total car travel Mode share of Mode share of Total travel Total bus Total car travel Mode share of Mode share of
time (hr) travel time (hr) time (hr) bus (%) car (%) time (hr) travel time (hr) time (hr) bus (%) car (%)
No bus lane 665.5
665.5 278.0 387.5 42.9% 57.1% No bus lane 664.4
664.4 277.4 387.0 42.3% 57.7%
Optimum Optimum
configuration 652.9
652.9 262.7 390.2 43.1% 56.9% configuration 647.3
647.3 257.7 389.7 42.5% 57.5%
Full buslane 999.6
999.6 228.9 770.7 43.7% 56.3% Full buslane 920.5
920.5 233.6 687.0 42.8% 57.2%

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 Enumeration – Evening Peak Demand

Total travel Total bus Total car travel Mode share of Mode share of Total travel Total bus Total car travel Mode share of Mode share of
time (hr) travel time (hr) time (hr) bus (%) car (%) time (hr) travel time (hr) time (hr) bus (%) car (%)
No bus lane 664.4
664.4 277.4 387.0 42.3% 57.7% No bus lane 664.4
664.4 277.4 387.0 42.3% 57.7%
Optimum Optimum
configuration 647.3
647.3 257.7 389.7 42.5% 57.5% configuration 647.3
647.3 257.7 389.7 42.5% 57.5%
Full buslane 920.5
920.5 233.6 687.0 42.8% 57.2% Full buslane 920.5
920.5 233.6 687.0 42.8% 57.2%

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Possible Causes of Bad Performance of GA

• We didn’t run the algorithm long enough

• The population size is too small
• There are dependencies between bus lane locations
• To test the dependency, the following procedure is applied
• For each symmetrical set 𝑆:
• The symmetrical set 𝑆 is added to all bus lane configurations that do not contain 𝑆
• The changes in the total travel time before and after adding 𝑆 is plotted to a histogram
• The resulting histograms shows how much the effect of a bus lane
implementation depends on the already existing bus lanes

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 𝑆=1 𝑆=2 𝑆=3 𝑆=4

𝑆=5 𝑆=6 𝑆=7 𝑆=8

𝑆=9 𝑆 = 10 𝑆 = 11 𝑆 = 12

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Location Optimization of Transit Signal Priority

• 84 OD pair and 336 links

• Origins and destinations are
located at the middle of each link
• Each intersection is a signalized
intersection with 90 sec cycle
length
• Bus headway is 6 min
• Links have same length, capacity,
and free flow speed
• Algorithm is tested for uniform
undersaturated demand pattern.
• Transit preemption strategy is
tested

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TSP activation

• The tested transit signal priority strategy is transit preemption

• When a bus enters a link the signal at the downstream intersection is
switched to green and kept green until bus leaves the link
• To activate the TSP a bus tracking algorithm is used
• Every 6 minutes (40-time steps), the upstream cumulative vehicle count of
the first link of the bus route is marked as a bus
• At each time step, the downstream vehicle count of a link with a bus is
checked. Once the downstream vehicle count is equal to or exceeds the
number assigned to the bus it is assumed that the bus has left that link
• Once a bus leaves a link, the upstream cumulative vehicle count of the next
link in the bus route is marked as a bus

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Evaluation of All TSP case

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 Results of location optimization

# of intersections Total
Total bus
bus Total Car Total # of times
equipped with travel
travel travel travel TSP
Scenario TSP time
time (hr)
(hr) time (hr) time (hr) activated
a (Baseline) 0 568
568 815 1383 0
b 4 504
504 813 1317 31
c 4 529
529 813 1342 15
d 4 554
554 814 1368 27
e 4 552
552 814 1366 27
f 8 442
442 808 1250 73
g 8 543
543 814 1356 53
h 8 498
498 809 1307 70
i 8 496
496 809 1305 74
j 8 503
503 816 1319 31
k 8 499
499 815 1314 32
l 12 477
477 808 1285 116
m 12 505
505 815 1319 46
n 12 424
424 807 1231 109
o 12 424
424 809 1233 110
p 16 407
407 807 1214 140

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Future Work

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Optimization for Transit Signal Priority

• Results of TSP optimization problem revealed some limitations of LTM

• Bus and car travel speeds are assumed to be equal
• Lost time at the bus stops are not accounted
• LTM assumes vehicles accelerate to travel speed instantly without any lost
time due to reaction or acceleration
• To improve the accuracy of LTM:
• Adding a one time step long (~5 sec) all-red phase after each phase change.
• Changing the capacity of the intersection dynamically
• Simulating the transit network
• After the lower level of the TSP optimization problem is updated, the
optimization algorithm will be applied to other active TSP strategies

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Optimization for Intermittent Bus Lanes

• The current model does not allow dynamic control of the status of
the lane
• The links with intermittent bus lanes must be modeled with two links
• Intermittent bus lane can be activated by using the tracking algorithm used
for TSP activation

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Alternative Algorithms for Upper Level
Optimization

• Results of the enumeration scenarios revealed that the dependencies

between locations are significant
• Following algorithms will be tested:
• Compact genetic algorithm
• Population based incremental learning algorithm
• Bayesian optimization algorithm

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Finding Optimum Sequence of Implementation

• A tri-level approach will be tested

• First two level finds the optimum configuration for transit priority applications
without budget constraint
• Third level uses the configuration found from first two level and finds the
optimum application sequence with budget constraint

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Research Timeline

Fall Spring Fall Spring

2018 2019 2019 2020
Transit signal priority
Alternative upper level algorithm
Intermittent bus lanes
Optimum application sequence

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