Reducing carbon emissions by introducing electric vehicle enhanced dedicated bus lanes

Most cities have special lanes dedicated to buses, however these lanes are rarely used at full capacity. At the same time governments around the world are encouraging people to buy electric vehicles. This paper proposes the creation of electric vehicle enhanced dedicated bus lanes (E-DBL), by allowing electric vehicles access to bus lanes, in order to improve the use of road capacity. By opening bus lanes to electric vehicles, traffic congestion could be eased, the range of electric vehicles could be extended, and the travel times for electric vehicle owners could be reduced significantly. The paper shows how by introducing E-DBLs, the bus journey times are not significantly affected given the current uptake of electric vehicles in most developed countries. This paper presents extensive simulations based on traffic situation in the city of Dublin with regard to the effect of opening up bus lanes to electric vehicles. The results show that even with very high percentages of electric vehicles the bus journey times are not noticeably affected. Opening up bus lanes to electric vehicles can even be beneficial for other road users by reducing congestion on regular lanes, which would further reduce carbon emissions.