Path-Constrained Traffic Assignment: Continuously Distributed Bounds on Travel Weights

A new traffic assignment problem with continuously distributed bounds on travel weights is introduced in this paper, as an emerging modeling tool for evaluating traffic networks in which the route choice behavior of individual motorists is subject to heterogeneous upper limits of some flow-independent travel weights. This problem may arise from the following two traffic network instances. In a traffic network serving electric vehicles, the driving range of these vehicles is subject to onboard battery capacities and electricity consumption rates as well as network-wide battery-recharging opportunities, which cause the so-called “range anxiety” issue in the driving population. In a tolled traffic network, while drivers take into account both travel time and road toll in their route choice decisions, many of them imply a “budget constraint” on willing-to-pay toll charges, by considering their own income levels, trip purposes and other socio-economic factors. For characterizing and quantifying such traffic assignment instances, the authors proposed a convex programming model with a finite number of constraints, on the basis of newly introduced modeling components, namely, weight-ordered path set and weight-partitioned path flow rate. The mathematical properties of the model was then analyzed and a linear approximation algorithm was further implemented, where the algorithm encapsulates an efficient weight-constrained 𝑘-minimum cost path search procedure to perform the network loading. Numerical results obtained from conducting quantitative analyses on example networks clearly illustrate the applicability of the modeling and solution methods for the defined problem and reveal the mechanism of continuously distributed weight limits reshaping the network equilibrium.

  • Supplemental Notes:
    • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB30 Standing Committee on Transportation Network Modeling.
  • Authors:
    • Xie, Chi
    • Wu, Xing
    • Boyles, Stephen
  • Conference:
  • Date: 2018

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: Digital/other
  • Features: Figures; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 16p

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01661296
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: 18-04790
  • Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
  • Created Date: Feb 26 2018 1:47PM