Planning for Bus Rapid Transit in Single Dedicated Bus Lane

Abstract

Bus rapid transit (BRT) systems with dedicated lanes have shown advantages over traditional bus systems and have attracted more transit riders. However, it is not always possible to build BRT systems with double dedicated lanes because of physical and cost constraints. A BRT system with a single dedicated lane is more practical in such situations. In a single-lane configuration, buses approaching from opposite directions have to share the same road section and can overtake or pass each other only at the bus stops. An optimization model is proposed to describe the synchronization requirements of the BRT buses with the objective of minimizing the total travel and dwell time. The computational results show that a BRT system with a single dedicated lane yields total travel time that is similar to that of a BRT system with double dedicated lanes when the headway is not short (e.g., more than 20 min). In addition, to address possible delay at intersections, a simple speed control algorithm is implemented to adjust the bus speed in real time if the bus is delayed considerably. A microscopic simulation based on VISSIM is conducted to examine the impacts of the BRT bus on other traffic and the performance of the speed control. The simulation result shows that the speed control effectively handles the delay in the intersection and the other traffic is rarely affected by the speed control.