Impact of Curbside Parking on Bicycle Lane Capacity in Nanjing, China

Abstract

As roadway resources are being occupied by curbside parking and because of the operational characteristics of parking maneuvers, the capacity of the adjacent travel lane can be significantly reduced. To analyze the influence of curbside parking on the capacity of the bicycle lane, a conflict technique based on additive conflict flow was applied to establish the base capacity model. The actual capacity of the bicycle lane with curb parking was then established by adjusting the base capacity to reflect the influence: lane width, the time influence of parking maneuvers, and proportion of e-bikes. Eight datasets from the exclusive bicycle lanes with different widths and parking maneuvers were collected in Nanjing, China for calibration and evaluation purposes. As a result of a higher number of parking maneuvers, the Emeiling Road was taken as the main case study. The capacity of the bicycle lane was calculated, and the effectiveness of the proposed method was validated by the speed-density-volume relationship model. The proposed model was applied to analyze the effect of different positions of parking berths on the capacity. The results indicate that, with around 65% share of e-bikes, the estimated capacity of Emeiling Road is 2622 bicycles/h, decreasing by 47.10% under the influence of curbside parking. The results also imply that the berths near the openings of the isolation belt have less influence than those in the middle position. These findings could be helpful and useful for practitioners to improve the capacity of bicycle lanes under the influence of curbside parking.