Narrow Results

In this paper, we use the traffic flow model proposed by Tang et al. [Physica A387, 6845 (2008)] to study the effects of bus stop on traffic flow. Our numerical tests show that bus stop will have great effects on the stability of traffic flow and that the effects are related to the initial density and the number of bus stops. The numerical results are accordant with the real traffic, which shows that the model proposed by Tang et al. can describe some complex traffic phenomena resulted by bus stop.

Based on velocity-difference-separation model, the mixed traffic flow on two-lane road is investigated. For a fixed road length, the influence of bus and bus stops on traffic flow is studied with the increasing traffic density. Compared with the result without bus stops given by Li et al., a new traffic state is found, which is valuable for studying the impacts of public transport on urban traffic flow.

Taxis and buses have significant influence on traffic flow due to their special moving and stopping behavior. Based on the analysis of their operation and stopping characteristics, a two-lane cellular automaton model for urban roads considering the influence of stopping behavior is established, the vehicle type, cell length and moving speed are re-described. Considering the linear taxi stop and the linear bus stop, the characteristics of traffic flow under two different combination settings are studied. The numerical simulation results show that the combined bottleneck effect has little impact on flow rate and average speed when the bus stop is set on the upstream of the taxi stop, and the distance between stops should be 50 m. These findings lay a solid foundation for better description of urban traffic flow and enable better scientific planning and control of urban traffic.