Discharge model and control strategy for E-bicycle mixed intersections

An e-bicycle, also known as an electric bicycle, is one of the major trip modes in the third and fourth-tier small cities of China which is quite different from big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Traditional traffic signal control approaches are often based on the pure motor vehicles, regardless the effect of increasing e-bicycles. This paper proposed a discharge model of e-bicycle mixed traffic flows and developed an average delay formula based on that. We analysed the relationship between the average delay and cycle length, for the cases of pure motor vehicles delay and e-bicycle mixed traffic delay, respectively. Moreover, we presented a practical traffic signal control strategy for intersections with e-bicycle mixed traffic flow. It demonstrates that the optimal cycle length obtained from the proposed method is normally larger than that got from the Webster method, which complies with the field application and fits the real traffic circumstances.