Modelling connected and autonomous bus on dynamics of mixed traffic in partially connected and automated traffic environment

Since connected and autonomous buses (CABs) have great potential of being operated in partially connected environment and raise great impact on mixed traffic flow, this study develops an analytical model for modeling system dynamics of mixing connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV), human-driven vehicles (HV), and CABs in both cases of dedicated bus lane and non-dedicated bus lane, in which the impact of CABs is specifically quantified under varied levels of connected vehicle penetration. A Vissim-Matlab simulation evaluation is also developed for validating the model's effectiveness. The results demonstrate that the proposed model performs well with an accuracy of over 85%, and it can be up to 95% in case of non-dedicated bus lane when the inflow rate is higher than 2000veh/h. Besides, the impacts of CABs' volume, bus dwelling time, and bus stop location on the performance of mixed traffic flow are verified in two CAB operating environments. The obtained results can be used as the basis for planning and operating CABs in partially connected environment.