Redesigning infrastructure for autonomous vehicles and evaluating its impact on traffic

Abstract

Public transport systems, being a safe and sustainable mode of transport, can benefit to a great extent from availing Autonomous vehicle (AV)s. However, the advancements in the road transport infrastructure is not at par with advancements in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and vehicle technologies. Cities must consider these changes to realize AVs as a public transport mode. In this paper, we propose three busbay designs to integrate AVs with public transport to address this issue. We develop a microscopic traffic simulation model to find the effectiveness of these designs with traffic data obtained from local transport authority and field measurements. The designs are simulated in Singapore city and could be adopted to other cities. Results show that an exclusive AV bay which is physically separated from bus bay reduced the travel time of AV by 5%. Queue length, at the signal near bus stop, has decreased by 27% for such a design.