Assessing Impacts of Shared Bike-Bus Lanes on Bus Operations

Abstract

A shared bike-bus lane is a potential alternative to exclusive bike lanes in streets with limited scope for extension. A shared bike-bus lane allows the bikes to share the right of way with buses only (safer compared to traditional shared lanes). Though a shared bike-bus lane will separate bicycles from the motorized traffic stream, it may negatively impact bus operations—delay and headways. Also, these effects will vary due to heterogenous interactions between bikes and buses. This study investigates: (i) the impact of introducing bike-bus lanes on bus performances (mobility and emissions), (ii) the effect of shifted and induced demand due to changes in bus headways, speed, and ridership, and (iii) the impacts of different driving behavior (modeled using car-following parameters). We used a microsimulation tool PTV Vissim to simulate hypothetical scenarios on a real-world network from New York City, NY. Later we used the trajectories from Vissim to estimate emissions using EPA MOVES through Link-Driving-Schedules. The results showed that sharing lanes with bikes will increase bus delays and speed compared to the base case—an exclusive bus lane without bikes. However, the emissions might be lower under specific conditions regarding bus headway distribution, speed, and demand for bicycles.