Title: Designing route guidance strategy with travellers' stochastic compliance: a bi-level optimal control procedure

Authors: Wei-li Sun; Ling-long Hu; Ping Li; Hui Wang

Addresses: Department of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China ' Department of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China ' Department of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China ' Department of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

Abstract: The problem of designing route guidance strategies for motorway networks with travellers' stochastic compliance is considered in this paper. A generic problem formulation is presented in the format of a bi-level optimal control problem with the use of a second-order macroscopic traffic flow model. Next, the sensitivity with respect to travellers' compliance is utilised to give a deterministic conversion. Then, a gradient-based numerical solving algorithm is given and the approach is validated in a hypothetic network. Simulation shows that the expectation of the total time spent with the optimal route guidance improves about 23% in average, and the efficiency of the optimisation in the upper as well as in the lower level is discussed in a detailed example. Finally, the sensitivity analysis of the important parameters is proposed.

Keywords: route guidance; variable message signs; VMS; bi-level optimal control; stochastic compliance; motorway networks; traffic flow modelling; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIC.2013.055656

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control, 2013 Vol.19 No.4, pp.378 - 387

Published online: 27 Sep 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article