School buses: mimicking their physical and dynamic characteristics along with functional rules to model and assess operational and environmental impacts

Some of the least studied vehicle types in the urban and suburban traffic environment are school buses. Their physical characteristics, dynamic deficiencies, as well as the two additional rules (no right-turn-on-red, RTOR and stop at every railroad crossing) that govern their functionality versus other vehicles makes them a relatively higher delay-inducing traffic participant. Therefore, the objective of this paper is at mimicking, modelling and analyzing the impact of school buses on operational and environmental performance measures over a coordinated signalized arterial corridor. The real-world study corridor was modelled, and analysis was performed using Vissim traffic simulation software. The before condition (without the new school and school buses) and after condition (with the new school and addition of school buses) were analyzed using vehicle delay, queue length, the number of stops per vehicle, arrivals on green, and platoon ratio as the measures of effectiveness. The financial impact was also analysed using emissions as a measure of effectiveness. The results confirm that there exists a quantifiable decrease in the operational performance due to school buses on the coordinated signalized arterial corridor.