Abstract
The popularity of electric bicycles in China makes them a common transportation mode for people to commute and move around. However, with the increase in traffic volumes for both vehicles and electric bicycles, urban traffic safety and congestion problems are rising due to traffic conflicts between these two modes. To regulate travel behavior, it is essential to analyze the mode choice and route choice behaviors of travelers. This study proposes a combined modal split and multiclass traffic user equilibrium model formulated as a complementarity problem (CP) to simultaneously characterize the mode choice behavior and route choice behavior of both vehicle and electric bicycle users. This model captures the impacts of route travel time and out-of-pocket cost on travelers’ route choice behaviors. Further, modified Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) functions are developed to model the travel times of links with and without physical separation between vehicle lanes and bicycle lanes. This study also analyzes the conditions for uniqueness of the equilibrium solution. A Newton method is developed to solve the proposed model. Numerical examples with different scales are used to validate the proposed model. The results show that electric bicycles are more favored by travelers during times of high network congestion. In addition, total system travel time can be reduced significantly through physical separation of vehicle lanes from electric bicycle lanes to minimize their mutual interference.
Highlights
In recent years, electric bicycles (E-bikes) quickly became one of the main nonmotorized travel modes in some developing countries, especially in China [1,2,3]
To consider the mode choice behavior between vehicles and E-bikes, this paper presented a multimode traffic assignment model formulated as a complementarity problem (CP)
The route cost was assumed to consist of route travel time and out-of-pocket cost
Summary
Electric bicycles (E-bikes) quickly became one of the main nonmotorized travel modes in some developing countries, especially in China [1,2,3]. As discussed before, compared with vehicles, E-bikes can run at higher speeds in congested areas, even though their designed speeds are less than those of vehicles This characteristic can be captured by setting different parameters in the modified BPR functions. The proposal of a complementarity problem to model the multimode and traffic assignment problems regarding both vehicles and E-bikes, with the uniqueness of solution to this problem analytically discussed; The development of modified BPR functions to capture interactions between the two traffic modes and impacts of characteristics of each mode on link travel time; The consideration of out-of-pocket costs related to factors (such as security, environment, distance, fuel and electricity prices, etc.) affecting users’ mode choice behaviors.
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