Needs-Based Signalized Intersection Management: Priority Pass

The 5th Symposium on Management of Future Motorway and Urban Traffic System (MFTS), Heraklion, Greece, September 04-06, 2024

Road transportation systems are usually designed for optimizing transportation efficiency. A pure focus on efficiency overlooks, that drivers are not equal in their urgency; delays cause them different harm. Vehicle prioritization is a promising countermeasure to this equity issue. Existing strategies for prioritization include dedicated lanes (e.g. for public transport), legislative prioritization (e.g. ambulance), and economic instruments (e.g. high occupancy toll lanes). There is no dedicated instrument that allows for prioritization at intersections in practice yet, even though intersections are a major source of delays in urban contexts. In this work, we analyze, to which extent it is possible to expedite a certain share of vehicles at intersections, without causing arbitrary delays for the other vehicles or affecting transportation efficiency de trop. We propose the Priority Pass, a needs-based signalized intersection management. Entitled vehicles shall be prioritized at intersections, resulting in shorter delays. The Priority Pass is an intelligent transportation system, that builds upon auction-controllers, and existing, urban, vehicle-identifying infrastructure. Micro-simulations demonstrate that the Priority Pass generates significant societal benefits & delay reductions for entitled vehicles, without causing arbitrary delays for not-entitled vehicles. Effects on transportation efficiency are negligible.