The capacity drop caused by the combined effect of the intersection and the bus stop in a CA model

The aim of this work is to investigate the combined effect of the signalized intersection and its near-by bus stop, by using a two-lane CA model. Four cases that the stop locates upstream or downstream the intersection, and ones with the special stop lane or not are considered. The effect of the distance LD between the stop and the intersection on the capacity is studied, with respect to the traffic light cycle T and the bus dwell time T,. It is found that acting as a bottleneck, the bus stop near the intersection causes the drop of the capacity. The negative effect only appears below a critical point LD,, which is related to the T and the T, in no stop lane cases. The larger T and T, have the tendency to create the higher loss of the capacity. While for stop lane cases, the critical value LD, changes little. Comparisons among four cases suggest that the special stop lane can effectively enhance the capacity, and the downstream stops perform better than the upstream ones at small LD or small Tor large T,. The results imply that the capacity can be maximized by adjusting both the position of the bus stop and the cycle time, or adding a special stop lane. These findings may be useful to offer scientific guidance for the management and the design of traffic networks. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.