Priority pass: Signal control with focus on needs

24th Swiss Transport Research Conference (STRC 2024), Ascona, Switzerland, May 15-17, 2024

Signalized intersection management is typically designed with a focus on transportation efficiency metrics such as throughput, queue length and average delay time, to the neglect of vehicle-specific urgencies. This conceptual work proposes a Priority Pass for urban networks as a feasible, economic instrument to expedite entitled vehicles at auction-controlled signalized intersections using movement-phase bidders. The interplay of transportation and economic efficiency at intersections with varying saturation, symmetry, and entitlement is analyzed. The value of the concept is robustly demonstrated for a wide range of scenarios. The Priority Pass creates significant benefits for entitled vehicles without causing arbitrary delays for not-entitled vehicles or de trop worsening transportation efficiency. What’s more, no significant conflict between transportation and economic efficiency was found in the given setup.