Abstract
The development of advanced technologies has led to the emergence of autonomous vehicles. Herein, autonomous public transport (APT) systems equipped with prioritization measures are being designed to operate at ever faster speeds compared to conventional buses. Innovative APT systems are configured to accommodate prevailing passenger demand for peak as well as non-peak periods, by electronic coupling and decoupling of platooned units along travel corridors, such as the dynamic autonomous road transit (DART) system being researched in Singapore. However, there is always the trade-off between high vehicle speed versus passenger ride comfort, especially lateral ride comfort. This study analyses a new APT system within the urban context and evaluates its performance using microscopic traffic simulation. The platooning protocol of autonomous vehicles was first developed for simulating the coupling/decoupling process. Platooning performance was then simulated on VISSIM platform for various scenarios to compare the performance of DART platooning under several ride comfort levels: three bus comfort and two railway criteria. The study revealed that it is feasible to operate the DART system following the bus standing comfort criterion (ay = 1.5 m/s2) without any significant impact on system travel time. For the DART system operating to maintain a ride comfort of the high-speed train (HST) and light rail transit (LRT), the delay can constitute up to ≈ 10% and ≈ 5% of travel time, respectively. This investigation is crucial for the system delay management towards precisely designed service frequency and improved passenger ride comfort.
Highlights
The emergence of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has engendered innovative solutions for traffic congestion mitigation as well as the improvement of the passenger riding experience
Autonomous public transport (APT) systems equipped with prioritization measures are being designed to operate at ever faster speeds compared to conventional buses
Innovative autonomous public transport (APT) systems are configured to accommodate prevailing passenger demand for peak as well as non-peak periods, by electronic coupling and decoupling of platooned units along travel corridors, such as the dynamic autonomous road transit (DART) system being researched in Singapore
Summary
The emergence of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has engendered innovative solutions for traffic congestion mitigation as well as the improvement of the passenger riding experience. There is always the trade-off between vehicle speed against rider comfort induced by the acceleration from the road. It is difficult to achieve ride comfort levels similar to high-speed trains (HST) and light rail transit (LRT), especially in a dense urban network with tight alignment and turning curves along the traveling routes. This study, aims to investigate the passenger-vehicle-road geometrics interaction to develop a new sustainable transportation system focusing on the user perspective. The horizontal alignment and passenger ride comfort are linked based on the back-calculation of vehicle speeds at different lateral acceleration levels. The study provides a new platooning protocol and comprehensive evaluation on the trade-off between passenger ride comfort against platoon performance e.g., travel time and platoon trajectories. The results and discussion section reports and discusses the main results of this investigation, as well as the outlook for further study
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