Development and evaluation of bus lanes with intermittent and dynamic priority in connected vehicle environment

Exclusive bus lanes provide a very high level of priority for transit operations, especially for Bus Rapid Transit and Express service, but these lanes could be underutilized and be a source of extra capacity if they could be shared in an intelligent way. This article explores the benefits of providing intermittent priority, called bus lane with intermittent and dynamic priority, of these exclusive bus lanes. Intermittent and dynamic priority can be implemented by allowing vehicles to use the lane when Bus Rapid Transit or Express bus is not present. Drivers can be alerted when a bus is in the lane using either infrastructure-based signs, or in the future using infrastructure-to-vehicle, or connected vehicle communications. Some critical operating parameters for implementing bus lane with intermittent and dynamic priority system including clear distance, degree of saturation (volume-to-capacity ratio), connected vehicle penetration, and bus departure/headway frequency have been investigated in this paper.