An Eco-Driving Strategy Considering Phase-Switch-Based Bus Lane Sharing

Abstract

Eco-driving is one of the most effective control strategies to enable energy management for urban traffic. However, the existing eco-driving strategies still have two shortcomings: (i) these strategies lack the consideration of lateral decision-making; (ii) their performance deteriorates when a controlled vehicle encounters traffic queues at a signalized intersection. To overcome these shortcomings, this paper proposes an innovative eco-driving strategy at intersection approach lanes consisting of the bus-priority lane (BPL) and general-purpose lanes (GPLs). The proposed strategy has the capability of lateral decision-making and allows ego connected and automated vehicles (CAV) to bypass the traffic queue. To enable this capability, the proposed strategy permits the ego CAV to change lanes and share the BPL. Both left-turning-movement CAVs and going-through-movement CAVs are allowed to share the BPL; i.e., the function of the BPL can be switched as per the phases of a traffic signal scheme. Through phase-switch-based bus lane sharing, the proposed eco-driving strategy aims to improve traffic efficiency and sustainability under the partially connected and automated traffic environment. To validate its effectiveness, the proposed strategy is evaluated against the non-control baseline and the state-of-the-art strategy. Sensitivity analysis is conducted under six different demand levels and five different CAV penetration rates. The results show that the proposed eco-driving strategy outperforms and has the benefits of fuel efficiency improvement, throughput improvement, and delay reduction.