Developing Capacity Reduction Factors for Curbside Bus Stops Under Heterogeneous Traffic Conditions

Abstract

Traffic characteristics of a roadway are significantly influenced by bus stops, and it becomes more chaotic when a separate bus bay is not provided and the bus has to be stopped in the curb lane. The present study analyzes the effect of such bus stops on the midblock capacity of urban arterials under heterogeneous traffic conditions. Field data have been collected at six sections of six-lane divided urban arterial roads; out of that, three sections have not marked with bus stop and referred to as base sections, whereas the other three have designated bus stops and denoted as friction sections. A set of simultaneous equations are established using speed and flow data to estimate the midblock capacity of urban roads and found to be 6000 PCU/h for one direction of flow. Further, a set of simultaneous equations are developed between the speed of a vehicle type and the densities of all categories of vehicles with densities of stopped buses in their individual terms. These equations are solved for any number of stopping buses at a fixed proportion of vehicles in the traffic stream for different traffic volume levels and thus get the capacity curves. It has been found that the capacity of urban arterials is reduced by 6.6–28.3% when the frequency of stopping buses is as low as 20 bus/h to as high as 120 bus/h, respectively. The study outcomes are useful for designing bus stops and at the same time estimating the capacity of such sections in order to reduce the congestion on the urban roadway network.