The Capital District Transportation Committee (CDTC) and the local transit authority CDTA wanted to investigate the potential to use bus lanes and infrastructure improvements to provide high-quality, efficient bus service in the Albany region. CDTC hired Foursquare ITP to develop the region’s long-range regional transportation plan, which recommended exploring the feasibility of using bus lanes to support the development of a high-performance regional transit system that is both innovative and viable. The transit authority already operates several BRT lines but wants to expand on the number and intensity of the bus priority treatments.
Foursquare ITP led all aspects of this study to produce bus priority concepts along four corridors focusing on an implementable, tactical approach. The study considered bus only lanes, shared bus/parking lanes, shared bus/bike lanes, transit signal priority, queue jumps, and other types of bus and bike priority strategies across CDTA’s service area. The identified improvements will allow buses to operate faster and more reliably and improve service to thousands of riders daily. This study will set the stage for moving real bus priority in the region forward.
The study evaluated improvements across 12 corridors to help prioritize improvements and includes conceptual designs and visualizations of the improvements at key intersections. The results of the study are being used as the basis for further analysis and conceptual design in one corridor and as a key input to a follow-on BRT expansion study.
Solutions and Outcomes
- Identified bus lane candidate locations.
- Created visualizations of bus lane street layouts.
- Detailed conceptual analysis of the bus lane impact.
- Supported future detailed design and preliminary engineering.