Title: Cost driven traffic assignment in transportation networks

Authors: Doraid Dalalah; Wasfi A. Al-Rawabdeh

Addresses: Faculty of Engineering, Industrial Engineering Department, Jordan University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 3030, Irbid, 22110, Jordan ' Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Department of Management, The Hashemite University, P.O. Box 150459, Zarqa, 13115, Jordan

Abstract: A cost driven traffic assignment model is proposed to maximise the global benefit of transportation network users. A decentralised primal-dual time synchronised approach is used to solve for the optimal traffic rates subjecting the objective function to the bounds of the network tolerable costs. For a successful operation of the transportation network, the affordable upper bounds on the costs have to be set carefully. A breakeven analysis was presented to estimate the network charges. It came across that the longer the route, the higher its charge. The breakeven surcharges represent the minimum quantities a network may charge from its commuters for a profitable operation. The presented scheme demonstrates a great control on the queue sizes and motivates resource allocation in heterogeneous transportation networks. The experimental results reveal an attractive convergence, performance and sensible resource assignment between the network users while achieving comprehensive optimality in a distributed approach.

Keywords: traffic assignment; modelling; transport networks; optimisation; breakeven analysis; queue sizes; resource allocation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMOM.2013.058333

International Journal of Modelling in Operations Management, 2013 Vol.3 No.3/4, pp.219 - 240

Received: 27 Mar 2013
Accepted: 06 Aug 2013

Published online: 29 Jan 2014 *

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