Deploying dedicated lanes for connected and autonomous buses in urban transportation networks

To promote the ridership of connected and autonomous buses (CABs), this paper proposes to build CAB lanes in urban transportation networks. Three travel modes are considered: CAB, connected and autonomous passenger vehicle (CAV) and human-driven passenger vehicle (HV). To better utilise the capacities of CAB lanes, CAVs are granted limited access while maintaining good levels of services on these lanes. Analyses show that deploying CAB lanes may substantially increase the ridership of CABs and increase total social benefit, and allowing limited CAV access can further improve the overall system performance. The CAB lane allocation problem is formulated into a mixed-integer nonlinear programme. Numerical tests are performed to demonstrate the approach.