Study on the Invasion Behavior of E-Bikes with Motor Vehicle Traffic at a Signalized Intersection

Abstract

In many developing countries like China, many queuing electric bikes (e-bikes) passing an intersection simultaneously greatly reduces the capacity of the intersection for motor vehicles, by invading the passing area of motor vehicles. To study the invasion effect of e-bikes on the traffic flow of motor vehicles at an urban signalized intersection, this paper proposes a social force model for the heterogeneous traffic flow of motor vehicles and e-bikes. The proposed model is calibrated and validated using real data collected in Chengdu, China. The validation results show that the proposed model can replicate the heterogeneous traffic flow with low errors. Simulations based on the proposed model are conducted to investigate what strategies can reduce the invasion of e-bikes in normal motor vehicle traffic. The results show that when the number of queuing e-bikes before the stop line is more than 20, the two strategies can be applied: the stop-line-ahead strategy and the green-signal-ahead strategy. The study suggests that the 2–4 s of green signal ahead or 3–5 m of stop line ahead for non-motor vehicles can significantly reduce the interference of e-bikes on motor vehicle traffic. In addition, the combination of the two strategies can also obtain the same effect but with smaller change to the original intersection design.