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Setting exclusive bus lanes (EBLs) on existing roads is a major measure to practise bus priority. However, the capacities for different vehicles will be changed with such strategies and then the travel times of different modes will be also changed. Accordingly, the presence of EBLs may be associated with significant impacts on the travellers’ mode choices and the performance of the whole traffic network, especially in a congested condition. This paper attempts to propose a EBLs design model for multimodal traffic network, in which the total travel cost of all travellers in network is regarded as the optimization objective. Firstly, this paper analyses the effects of EBLs on the capacities for transit vehicles and private cars and formulates the corresponding impedance functions based on the travel demand. The complex travellers’ choice behaviours (including mode choice and route choice) are analysed and a variational inequality model is then proposed to describe user equilibrium assignment problem in multimodal network. Further, a bi-level programming model is proposed to describe the EBLs design problem. The branch and bound algorithm is then given for solving the proposed bi-level problem. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness and feasibility of such model and algorithm.