Reliable Network Design Problem

Abstract

In the reliable network design problem (RNDP) the main sources of uncertainty are variable demand and route choice. The objective is to maximize network total travel time reliability (TTR), which is defined as the probability that the network total travel time will be less than a threshold. A framework is presented for a stochastic network model with Poisson-distributed demand and uncertain route choice. The travelers are assumed to choose their routes to minimize their perceived expected travel cost following the probit stochastic user equilibrium condition. An analytical method is presented for approximation of the first and second moments of the total travel time. These moments are then fitted with a log-normal distribution. Then the design problem is tackled in which the analytical derivative of the TTR is derived with the sensitivity analysis of the equilibrated path choice probability. This derivative is then supplied to a gradient-based optimization algorithm to solve the RNDP. The algorithm is tested with a small network example.