An Integrated Model of Land Exploitation and Road Expansion

Abstract

In order to explore the interlinkages between land exploitation and road expansion, an integrated model is proposed to describe interactions between two kinds of agents, i.e., planners and commuters. The integrated model is formulated as a leader-follower problem (a bi-level programming). In the upper level, planners make decisions of the land exploitation as well as the road expansion, with objective of maximizing the social welfare. In the lower level, commuters choose their travel alternatives following the disutility minimization principle. Subsequently, the accumulated commuters perform as traffic flow on road network, which in turn affects the planners' decisions. On the basis of sensitivity analyses, a heuristic algorithm is presented to solve the bi-level programming model. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the application of the proposed model and the solution algorithm. The results show that an optimal solution with maximized social welfare could be achieved by certain integrated schemes of land exploitation and road expansion.