REALTIME PASSENGER INFORMATION AND BUS PRIORITY SYSTEM IN CARDIFF: BUS PRIORITY TRIAL

Cardiff is the fastest growing capital city in Europe and has an extensive Intelligent Transport Systems Infrastructure. In line with the policy of promoting public transport, the largest GPS based bus priority and realtime passenger information system to be installed in the UK was commissioned in Cardiff in time for the Rugby World cup final. The system is concentrated on the Northern corridor of the city and includes 120 passenger information signs, 191 buses and 46 signalised junctions. A unique feature of the system is the ability to provide information both visually and audibly in two languages. The project presented many challenges in terms of the size of the system, dual language, different levels of signal priority, a very short timescale and the fragmented nature of the public transport system. This paper describes the real-time passenger information and bus priority system installed in Cardiff, and the challenges installing the system. The second half of the paper presents the preliminary findings from a trial of the bus priority system, and compares priority enabled for all buses with priority for late bus only. For the covering abstract see ITRD E115303.