Pioneering Glasgow City Council AI technology to cut bus journey times by up to 50 per cent
Pilot on key A77 route into city centre from south side.
Pioneering AI bus technology that could cut journey times by up to half is to be trialled in Glasgow thanks to £490,000 in Scottish Government funding.
The technology will be tested by the city council on the A77 into the city centre from the south side, which is classed as a “vitally important strategic route” and includes Kilmarnock Road and Pollokshaws Road.
The experiment is aimed at further enhancing the UK’s biggest bus priority system in the city by using AI to predict bus and other vehicle movements so traffic lights are at green when buses pass junctions.
Brian Davidson, a Glasgow City Council engineering officer, said: “It has never been done on the scale we are planning.”
‘It will improve travel time for all vehicles’
The trial, which will involve upgrading detection systems at 23 junctions, follows a smaller pilot last year that produced journey time improvements of up to 50 per cent.
Mr Davidson said the system would improve traffic flow, especially during busy periods, make buses more reliable and cut pollution by reducing congestion.
If the latest trial is successful, the council hopes to deploy the system in the city centre.
Mr Davidson told The Scotsman: "We want to improve the journey time for buses to make them more reliable, and for people to have more confidence the bus is going to be there when it's supposed to be, and also that the travel time be reduced.
"But because the corridor we have picked is shared with other traffic, it will improve travel time for all vehicles.
“We were hoping to get a 10-20 per cent improvement in journey times, but we did a trial last year using the same technology at just six junctions and found on occasions it improved journey times by 50 per cent.
“We thought the modelling was wrong, so we implemented the plans that AI suggested for real on the street and measured it, and found it did improve travel time.
“That gave us confidence to say this technology should work on a larger scale.”
Mr Davidson said AI would significantly improve the existing system by being able to calculate bus movements.
He said: "The technology we have at the moment is really good at managing traffic flow, but it tends to work on a junction-by-junction basis.
Innovation
"When a bus is running late, it can request priority at traffic lights. But the problem we have got is that we don't know the bus is there and late until it is about ten seconds from the junction.
"If we knew a couple of minutes away that the bus was coming and it was late, then we could make plans in advance to try and ease the flow for that bus.”
Graeme Macfarlan, commercial director for First Bus Scotland, the city’s main operator, said: “The launch of this scheme shows how innovation and technical interventions in traffic management can make a real difference to bus journey times, especially on busy routes like Pollokshaws Road.”
‘Cutting edge’
The funding is part of the latest £20 million of grants from Transport Scotland’s bus infrastructure fund that also includes new bus lanes.
Mr Davidson said Glasgow had always been at the cutting edge of traffic technology, with a control box from 1931 recently removed for preservation from South Portland Street just south of the Clyde.
It was part of a system believed to have monitored traffic by using pressure pads on the road to detect vehicle movements.
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