01660540

Component

Exclusive bus lanes (EBLs) have been widely applied in practice to improve transit operation efficiency. However, it is frequently observed that the EBLs are under-utilized during a certain period of time when no transit buses are operating on the dedicated lane while long queues occur on standard vehicle lanes. Therefore, efficient utilization of exclusive bus lanes (EBLs) in congested urban networks with limited capacities is crucial for congestion mitigation. In this paper, the authors propose an operation scheme of a dynamic bus lane sharing system to dynamically control the utilization of EBLs. If traffic volume in EBLs is considerably under capacity, and the regular lanes are congested, then regular vehicles will be allowed to share the EBL. The key to the proposed operation scheme is to maximize utilization of EBLs, while ensuring required service level for transit vehicles. The CTM is modified to model the traffic flow dynamics considering heterogeneous vehicles (buses and non-bus vehicles). In particular, the authors introduce two variables which are the desired diverge proportion and the maximum allowed proportion to consider drivers’ choice behavior under the proposed lane sharing system. The numerical experiments show that in congested conditions, allowing a certain percentage (e.g., 20% to 35% in this specific scenario) of passenger vehicles to use the EBLs help reduce the non-bus vehicle delay and total delay while do not deteriorate the performance of the EBL system.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB15 Standing Committee on Intelligent Transportation Systems. Alternate title: A Dynamic Sharing System for Exclusive Bus Lanes.

18-04279

English

15p

2018

Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Behavior; Bus lanes; Drivers; Highway capacity; Highway traffic control; Passenger vehicles; Traffic congestion; Traffic delays; Traffic flow

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018 Paper #18-04279

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 8 2018 11:03AM