An Operation Scheme for Dynamic Sharing of Exclusive Bus Lanes: Modeling and Evaluation

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.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB15 Standing Committee on Intelligent Transportation Systems. Alternate title: A Dynamic Sharing System for Exclusive Bus Lanes.
• Authors:
  • Wang, Xingmin
  • Zheng, Fangfang
  • Zheng, Jianfeng (Jeff)
  • Liu, Xiaobo
  • Liu, Henry X
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Behavior; Bus lanes; Drivers; Highway capacity; Highway traffic control; Passenger vehicles; Traffic congestion; Traffic delays; Traffic flow
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01660540
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-04279
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 20 2018 9:29AM