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

Intermittent bus lanes (IBLs) can alleviate the contradiction between bus priority and the urgent demand of general vehicles for road resources. However, existing IBL strategies seldom pay attention to the setting method of the dynamic bus lanes at intersections, which leads to the still serious delay of buses at intersections in the traffic congestion environment. To tackle this issue, this research explores a novel method of setting the intermittent bus approach (IBA) of intersections for lane sharing and bus priority at intersections. In particular, a time slice division strategy with an intersection signal coordination model is developed to fully and reasonably allocate the idle time of bus lanes at intersections. Besides, considering the lane-changing demands of general vehicles at intersections, the parameters of the IBA lane system are modeled and optimized. For testing and verifying the feasibility of the proposed method, comparative experiments are conducted through microscopic traffic simulation. Results show that the proposed IBA setting method can effectively solve the problem of bus priority failure at intersections. It can maintain the continuity of vehicle running on intersection sections, which better exerts the operational benefits of dynamic bus lanes.