Traffic congestion can have a detrimental effect on public transit systems, and understanding and mitigating these effects is of critical importance for effective public transportation. Implementing Dedicated Bus Lanes (DBLs) is a well-known intervention to achieve this goal. A DBL is a designated lane for bus transit, which avoids congestion and substantially lowers the travel time. This makes transit more attractive, encouraging more travelers to adopt public transportation. This paper studies the impact of congestion and DBLs on novel On-Demand Multimodal Transit Systems (ODMTS). ODMTS combine traditional rail and bus networks with on-demand shuttles. Previous case studies have shown that ODMTS may simultaneously improve travel time, reduce system cost, and attract new passengers. Those benefits were shown for an ideal world without traffic congestion, and this paper hypothesizes that the advantages of ODMTS can be even more pronounced in the real world. This paper explores this hypothesis by creating realistic congestion scenarios and solving bilevel optimization problems to design ODMTS under these scenarios. The impact of DBLs on ODMTS is evaluated with a comprehensive case study in the Metro Atlanta Area. The results show that DBLs can significantly improve travel times and are effective at increasing adoption of the system.

中文翻译：

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拥堵和专用车道对按需多式联运系统的影响

交通拥堵会对公共交通系统产生不利影响，了解并减轻这些影响对于有效的公共交通至关重要。实施专用公交车道 (DBL) 是实现这一目标的一项众所周知的干预措施。DBL 是公交专用车道，可避免拥堵并大幅缩短出行时间。这使得交通更具吸引力，鼓励更多旅客采用公共交通。本文研究了拥堵和 DBL 对新型按需多式联运系统 (ODMTS) 的影响。ODMTS 将传统的铁路和公交网络与按需班车相结合。之前的案例研究表明，ODMTS 可以同时改善出行时间、降低系统成本并吸引新乘客。这些好处在没有交通拥堵的理想世界中得到了体现，本文假设 ODMTS 的优势在现实世界中会更加明显。本文通过创建现实的拥塞场景并解决双层优化问题来探索这一假设，以设计这些场景下的 ODMTS。通过亚特兰大都会区的综合案例研究评估了 DBL 对 ODMTS 的影响。结果表明，DBL 可以显着缩短出行时间，并有效提高系统的采用率。