Sharing bus lanes: a new lanes multiplexing-based method using a dynamic time slice policy

Abstract

Dedicated bus lanes (DBLs) can only be used by buses in principle, so there is an intermittent waste of road resources. Coupled with increasingly serious traffic congestion, how to fully exploit the relatively surplus road resources of DBLs under the premise of guaranteeing bus priority is an issue that is worth studying. The authors propose a dynamic time slice policy for the time division multiplexing (TDM) method to share dedicated bus lanes. First, the TDM method is outlined to present the basic mechanism of the dynamic time slice policy. Subsequently, models for predicting the travel times of approaching vehicles and lane-borrowing vehicles based on TDM are established. Then, a lane-borrowing discriminative model is proposed to determine whether low-priority vehicles have the right to use the DBL at the current moment, and the time slices of DBL multiplexing are allocated based on vehicles of different types. Furthermore, to increase the operability of the method in engineering applications, a spatiotemporal control strategy for TDM is designed. Finally, the dynamic time slice policy is applied to a DBL through simulations and practical traffic experiments. The results prove the feasibility of the dynamic time slice policy.

Capability of Intermittent Bus Lane Utilization for Regular Vehicles

“…Similarly, t on2 can be obtained when the bus is not halted at the near-side stop by using either equation ( 5) or (6). e result of t on also shows that when the bus stops, as long as the traffic queue does not hinder the rear bus B r , the near-side stop does not affect the capability of IBL.…”

“…For example, the control rule of IBL [2] is to demarcate a distance in front of the rear bus in the bus lane that regular vehicles cannot enter; all lane-borrowing vehicles maintain a buffer space with the rear bus when entering the bus lane, thereby reducing the obstruction to the rear bus. e bus lane with time-division multiplexing (BLTDM) method proposed by Dong and Zhao [5,6] stipulates that regular vehicles whose travel time on the road section does not exceed the travel time of the bus are permitted to enter the bus lane. ey believe that these vehicles can reach the end of the road before the rear bus and will not cause additional bus delays.…”

“…For example, in the bus lanes with intermittent priority (BLIP) method proposed by Eichler [14,15], the bus lane space in front of the rear bus acts as the eviction range and uses variable message sign (VMS) or signals embedded in the road to guide the vehicles to change lanes. Dong divided the bus lane in the road section into smaller space slices as eviction units in the BLTDM method [5,6]. Wu et al [16] used real-time interactions of connected vehicles (CVs) to send eviction information to vehicles within a controlled range, which further improved the control accuracy of the eviction range.…”

Setting the Intermittent Bus Approach of Intersections: A Novel Lane Multiplexing-Based Method with an Intersection Signal Coordination Model

“…The IBA based on lane multiplexing is actually the BLTDM in aforementioned intersection space slices. The details of the time slice division and lane control strategy of general space slices are described in the references [19,20]. This paper focuses on the IBA lane setting of intersection space slices.…”

“…By giving vehicles different priorities, the time and space domains of multiplexing links are controlled for lane sharing and bus priority. Subsequently, the authors further improved their methodology system, and conducted research and demonstration on the system architecture, control strategy and operation evaluation of BLTDM [17][18][19][20]. These studies suggest that the BLTDM strategy compensates for the limitations of existing IBL strategies to a certain extent, which provides new insights into the construction and management of bus lanes.…”