Conflict management at urban bus stops through cooperative trajectory planning

Abstract

Conflicts due to frequent bus dwelling and entering/exiting maneuvers at bus stops have significantly undermined the efficiency, safety, and sustainability of the urban bus system. This paper proposes a cooperative trajectory planning strategy in a Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) environment for conflict management between buses and cars at bus stops. A dynamic multi-stage-based model along with solution algorithm is developed to search trajectories that eliminate the conflicts between cars and buses entering and leaving the bus stop in real time.The assessment of the proposed strategy is carried out at both the bus stop and corridor levels within a simulated environment. In-depth trajectory analyses during a typical weaving process at a bus stop reveal that the proposed strategy effectively eliminates bottlenecks and enhances operational performance across multiple approach lanes affected by the bus stop. A thorough evaluation involving multiple cycles of weaving among buses and vehicles at the bus stop reaffirms the strategy’s effectiveness under varying levels of bus occupancies, traffic demand, and bus stop locations. The case study at the corridor level illustrates that the proposed strategy successfully improves operational performance and bus schedule adherence across diverse scenarios, encompassing different roadway link lengths, traffic demands, bus headways and dwelling times, and bus stop locations. It notably excels in enhancing the performance of an urban corridor with longer link distances and near-side located bus stops, particularly under high traffic demand levels and shorter bus dwelling times.