Dynamic Bus Lanes with Restricted Car Usage for Congested Arterial Routes
Bus routes which operate in mixed traffic on arterial streets experience problems with schedule adherence and travel time reliability which cause problems for the operating agency and decrease their utility for passengers. Reserved bus lanes are an option in some cases, but may not be possible in others due to political, financial, and spatial constraints. Previous research into the distribution of road space has developed ideas like intermittent bus lanes and bus lanes with intermittent priority which reserve specific blocks in space-time for buses. However, all of these would have non-negligible impacts on other traffic if implemented on a congested corridor. We develop static and dynamic methods for distributing road space on a three lane arterial street between buses and other vehicles while preserving a minimum level of performance for buses. The static method allows a fixed percentage of vehicles to use the bus lane. We note that the optimal value that minimizes passenger delays depends on the level of congestion and demand scenario. A dynamic control strategy is developed based on a linear feedback approach by utilizing speed of buses as a set point objective. This strategy is effective at maintaining minimum bus performance and could represent a system optimal solution if bus occupancy levels are high enough. The paper concludes by discussing implementation strategies and possible challenges for such a control strategy.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP015 Transit Capacity and Quality of Service.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Anderson, Paul
- Geroliminis, Nikolas
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC
- Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
- Date: 2014
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 17p
- Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Bus lanes; Bus transit operations; Control; Dynamic traffic assignment; Lane distribution; Microsimulation; Traffic delays
- Uncontrolled Terms: Fundamental diagram
- Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I71: Traffic Theory; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01518274
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 14-0818
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Mar 14 2014 9:25AM