Evaluating Operational Effects of Bus Lane with Intermittent Priority under Connected Vehicle Environments

Dingxin Wu,Yan Song,Wei Deng,Dewen Kong,Jian Wang

doi:10.1155/2017/1659176

Abstract

Bus lane with intermittent priority (BLIP) is an innovative method to improve the reliability of bus services while promoting efficient usage of road resources. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication is an advanced technology that can greatly enhance the vehicle mobility, improve traffic safety, and alleviate traffic jams. To explore the benefits of BLIP operation under a connected environment, this study proposed a three-lane cellular automata (CA) model under opening boundary condition. In particular, a mandatory BLIP lane-changing rule is developed to analyze special asymmetric lane-changing behaviors. To improve the simulation accuracy, a smaller cell size is used in the CA model. Through massive numerical simulations, the benefits and influences of BLIP are explored in this paper. They include impacts on neighborhood lanes such as traffic density increasing and average speed decreasing, lane-changing behaviors, lane usage, and the impacts of bus departure interval and clear distance on the road capacity of BLIP. Analysis of traffic flow characteristics of BLIP reveals that there is a strong relationship among bus departure interval, clear distance, and road capacity. Furthermore, setting conditions for deployment of BLIP under the V2V environment such as reasonable departure interval, clear distance, and traffic density are obtained.

Highlights

To reduce traffic congestion in urban areas, many strategies have been proposed to improve the operational efficiency and attractiveness of public transportation systems
The three-lane cellular automata (CA) model provides a useful tool to study the influence of the bus lane with intermittent priority (BLIP) on urban roads, explore suitable traffic conditions, and make better decisions in an application of the BLIP strategy under a connected vehicle environment
It is found that larger clear distance and higher bus departure frequency both increase the impact on general traffic under the BLIP strategy

Summary

Introduction

To reduce traffic congestion in urban areas, many strategies have been proposed to improve the operational efficiency and attractiveness of public transportation systems. The hypothetical BLIP simulation system consists of three parallel single lanes (left, middle, and right) It is based on V2V technology, which means each private vehicle can evaluate whether it is in the clear distance range of a rear bus or not according to real-time information (like location and speed). To mimic the common lane-changing behavior, the following three essential criteria are used in the proposed model: (1) the incentive criterion: a faster car wants to keep a desired high speed or avoid jamming traffic; (2) the security criterion: a driver only change lanes when it is safe and his/her behavior does not affect the movements of other vehicles on target lane; and (3) the time criterion: a car must remain in the original lane for at least 4 seconds before it starts to change lanes to avoid ping-pong lane-changing behaviors [14]. Those cars in the BLIP lane but not in the clear distance for a bus are not required to leave the lane for the oncoming buses

Simulations and Discussions

Findings

Conclusion