Optimal Sharing of Public Transport Lanes

Abstract

Urban traffic congestion represents a significant contemporary challenge, attracting considerable research interest in its mitigation. In light of the inherent difficulty and expense involved in infrastructure expansion, enhancing the exploitation level of existing infrastructure is deemed highly advantageous. This paper proposes a strategy to share the lanes dedicated to public transport fleets, e.g. buses or trams, with the passenger cars to improve the traffic condition. Employing the Cell Transmission Model (CTM), an Optimal Control Problem (OCP) is formulated to determine the lateral flow between the main road and the dedicated lane without any disruption to the public transport schedule. The OCP cost function is defined to minimize total travel time and unnecessary lateral movement, while CTM equations and the public fleet timetable are implemented as the OCP constraints. The preliminary findings from macroscopic simulation experiments indicate that the proposed approach enhances traffic conditions.