Alleviate Traffic Congestion and Reduce Energy Consumption by Setting a Peak-Only Bus Lane on a Bottleneck-Constrained Highway

Abstract

With the great popularity of the public transit which is a kind of green transportation, peak-only bus lane is gradually implemented on the corridors of large cities to make the bus runs a privilege to go through the bottleneck, then the bus runs can keep a faster speed which will definitely attract more potential commuters. And thus this will alleviate the traffic congestion caused by private cars and reduce the energy consumption and emissions to some degree. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the peak-only bus lane on alleviating traffic congestion and reducing energy consumption by using bottleneck model with auto and bus modes. The peak-only bus lane will occupy the bottleneck’s capacity by a fixed amount just within a fixed peak hour period. While the capacity of the bottleneck for auto mode commuters is time-varying within the whole commuting period. It is assumed that the mode choice and the departure time choice are governed by the user equilibrium criterion and nobody can decrease his/her total cost by adjusting the mode or the departure time in the equilibrium state. The departure rates for both bus and auto modes are derived analytically. The travel cost and energy consumption are analyzed with different bus dispatch frequencies and bus lane capacities. The numerical results showed that the setting of the peak-only bus lane will descend the number of commuters who choose the auto mode, and thus decrease the system’s total travel cost and energy consumption to certain degree. The optimal setting of the road resources and the frequency for peak-only bus lane was also investigated. We believe that the results are helpful to the planning and operating of peak-only bus lane, and it’s useful to alleviate traffic congestion, reduce the energy consumption and protect the environment.