Powering up urban mobility: A comparative study of energy efficiency in electric and diesel buses across various lane configurations

Abstract

This paper undertakes a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of the energy consumption characteristics of electric buses (EBs) and diesel buses (DBs) on different lane configurations (including regular, dedicated, and shared-use bus lanes) and different operational conditions. We resort to both data- and simulation-based approaches to investigate this topic. For this, we use GPS trajectory data from four transit corridors in Xi’an, China, which is complemented by a simulation-based analysis using a microscopic traffic simulator to mimic traffic dynamics on a 1-kilometer ring road. We show that EBs effectively consume less energy in suburban areas when utilizing regular lanes, while a dedicated bus lane layout offers minimal to no energy consumption benefits for DBs. Conversely, substantial energy savings are anticipated for both EBs and DBs when operating on dedicated bus lanes in downtown areas. Our simulation-based analysis showcases that the energy consumption of both bus types increases by over 25% on regular lanes compared to dedicated bus lanes under congested traffic conditions. Notably, shared-use bus lanes consistently exhibit the highest energy consumption in most scenarios, therefore being the less environmentally friendly lanes for deploying EBs and DBs.