Bilevel Formulation for Optimal Traffic-Information Dissemination

Author(s):  
Fan Yang ◽  
Henry X. Liu ◽  
Rachel R. He ◽  
Xuegang Ban ◽  
Bin Ran

With the fast-growing telematics market and maturing traffic-information services, telematics devices provide a feasible means with which to manage traffic more efficiently. The provision of traffic information to travelers usually involves different parties that have distinctive objectives: travelers are concerned with benefits of travel-time savings at an affordable service charge, private information service providers (ISPs) seek to provide marketable information services from which they can derive a profit, and traffic management centers (TMCs) have the responsibility to maintain and improve system performance, especially to minimize the total system travel time. How transportation system managers can analyze the trade-offs among these objectives and adjust this new traffic-information flow diagram to improve system performance remains an open question. The trade-offs needed among the conflicting multiple objectives of different parties are studied, and traffic system performance is analyzed. The complex traffic network is formulated as a bilevel program. The upper level can be formulated by using various objective functions, such as the objectives for ISP and TMC. The lower level is a multiclass dynamic traffic-assignment model, which determines dynamic traffic flows in the network by considering the information dissemination strategies provided by the upper-level model. Numerical results of a small network are provided to illustrate the behavior of this model, and they prove that when there is congestion in the dynamic transportation network, appropriate subscribed rates benefit both all travelers and system performance, while the ISPs’ information influences little without congestion in the transportation network.

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roozbeh Mohammadi ◽  
Amir Golroo ◽  
Mahdieh Hasani

In populated cities with high traffic congestion, traffic information may play a key role in choosing the fastest route between origins and destinations, thus saving travel time. Several research studies investigated the effect of traffic information on travel time. However, little attention has been given to the effect of traffic information on travel time according to trip distance. This paper aims to investigate the relation between real-time traffic information dissemination and travel time reduction for medium-distance trips. To examine this relation, a methodology is applied to compare travel times of two types of vehicle, with and without traffic information, travelling between an origin and a destination employing probe vehicles. A real case study in the metropolitan city of Tehran, the capital of Iran, is applied to test the methodology. There is no significant statistical evidence to prove that traffic information would have a significant impact on travel time reduction in a medium-distance trip according to the case study.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Dandl ◽  
Gabriel Tilg ◽  
Majid Rostami-Shahrbabaki ◽  
Klaus Bogenberger

The growing popularity of mobility-on-demand fleets increases the importance to understand the impact of mobility-on-demand fleets on transportation networks and how to regulate them. For this purpose, transportation network simulations are required to contain corresponding routing methods. We study the trade-off between computational efficiency and routing accuracy of different approaches to routing fleets in a dynamic network simulation with endogenous edge travel times: a computationally cheap but less accurate Network Fundamental Diagram (NFD) based method and a more typical Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) based method. The NFD-based approach models network dynamics with a network travel time factor that is determined by the current average network speed and scales free-flow travel times. We analyze the different computational costs of the approaches in a case study for 10,000 origin-destination (OD) pairs in a network of the city of Munich, Germany that reveals speedup factors in the range of 100. The trade-off for this is less accurate travel time estimations for individual OD pairs. Results indicate that the NFD-based approach overestimates the DTA-based travel times, especially when the network is congested. Adjusting the network travel time factor based on pre-processed DTA results, the NFD-based routing approach represents a computationally very efficient methodology that also captures traffic dynamics in an aggregated way.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Dandl ◽  
Gabriel Tilg ◽  
Majid Rostami-Shahrbabaki ◽  
Klaus Bogenberger

The growing popularity of mobility-on-demand fleets increases the importance to understand the impact of mobility-on-demand fleets on transportation networks and how to regulate them. For this purpose, transportation network simulations are required to contain corresponding routing methods. We study the trade-off between computational efficiency and routing accuracy of different approaches to routing fleets in a dynamic network simulation with endogenous edge travel times: a computationally cheap but less accurate Network Fundamental Diagram (NFD) based method and a more typical Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) based method. The NFD-based approach models network dynamics with a network travel time factor that is determined by the current average network speed and scales free-flow travel times. We analyze the different computational costs of the approaches in a case study for 10,000 origin-destination (OD) pairs in a network of the city of Munich, Germany that reveals speedup factors in the range of 100. The trade-off for this is less accurate travel time estimations for individual OD pairs. Results indicate that the NFD-based approach overestimates the DTA-based travel times, especially when the network is congested. Adjusting the network travel time factor based on pre-processed DTA results, the NFD-based routing approach represents a computationally very efficient methodology that also captures traffic dynamics in an aggregated way.


Author(s):  
Joseph P. Schwieterman

The potential diversion of passengers from public transit to transportation network companies (TNCs) is attracting considerable attention in metropolitan regions. Despite this, relatively little microeconomic analysis has been made available to explore how service attributes affect choices between the services offered by TNCs and public transit. To fill this shortfall, this study evaluates prices and service levels for Lyft, Lyft Line, UberX, UberPool, and Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) services in Chicago. Analysis of 3,075 fares and estimated travel times for 620 trips in the 4- to 11-mile range shows TNCs tend to be relatively costly when expressed in relation to the additional amount spent per unit of time saved. The average traveler using these four TNC services, across the entire sample, spends the equivalent of $42–$108 per hour saved—well above the $14.95/hr. the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) recommends assigning to the average transit passenger when conducting analyses about the value of time. However, for travelers on business and those between locations poorly served by transit, including trips between neighborhoods with less transit service than the downtown district, the analysis shows a significant share of passengers will likely find TNCs cost-effective options based on the U.S. DOT standard. The approach taken illustrates how the mobility benefits and competitive issues associated with TNCs can be systematically evaluated by reviewing the price and travel time characteristics of each trip.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Lihui Zhang ◽  
Hongsheng Qi ◽  
Dianhai Wang ◽  
Zhong Wang ◽  
Jian Yang

This paper investigates the turning restriction design problem that optimizes the turning restriction locations so as to minimize the total system travel time under the assumption of asymmetric user equilibrium. We first transform a transportation network into a dual graph, where traffic turning movements are explicitly modeled as dual links. The dual transformation allows us to derive a link-based formulation for the turning restriction design problem. Asymmetric user equilibrium is incorporated in the model as a set of nonlinear constraints. A dual-based heuristic algorithm is employed to solve the problem, by sequentially solving a relaxed turning restriction design problem and a design updating problem.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qing Li ◽  
Ziyou Gao

Within the morning and evening rush hour, the two-way road flows are always unbalanced in opposite directions. In order to make full advantage of the existing lanes, the two-way road lane has to be reallocated to play the best role in managing congestion. On the other hand, an effective tradable credit scheme can help to reduce the traffic demand and improve fairness for all travelers. So as to alleviate the commute congestion in urban transportation network, a discrete bilevel programming model is established in this paper. In the bilevel model, the government at the upper level reallocates lanes on the two-way road to minimize the total system cost. The traveler at the lower level chooses the optimal route on the basis of both travel time and credit charging for the lanes involved. A numerical experiment is conducted to examine the efficiency of the proposed method.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 3226
Author(s):  
Joongmin Cho ◽  
Young-Joo Lee ◽  
Seongkwan Mark Lee ◽  
Ki Han Song ◽  
Wonho Suh

Highway systems play a key role in providing mobility to society, especially during emergency situations, including earthquakes. Bridges in highway systems are susceptible to damage from earthquakes, causing traffic capacity loss leading to a serious impact on surrounding areas. To better prepare for such scenarios, it is important to estimate capacity loss and traffic disruptions from earthquakes. For this purpose, a traffic-capacity-analysisbased methodology was developed to model the performance of a transportation network immediately following an earthquake using a macroscopic multi-level urban traffic planning simulation model EMME4. This method employs the second order linear approximation (SOLA) traffic assignment and calculates total system travel time for various capacity loss scenarios due to bridge damage from earthquakes. It has been applied to Pohang City in Korea to evaluate the performance of traffic networks in various situations. The results indicate a significant increase in travel time and a decrease in travel speed as the intensity of an earthquake increases. However, the impact on traffic volume varies depending on the bridges. It is assumed that the location of the bridges and traffic routing patterns might be the main reason. The results are expected to help estimate the impact on transportation networks when earthquakes cause traffic capacity loss on bridges.


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