Study on the network acoustics environment effects of traffic management measures by a bilevel programming model

Abstract

This study examines the mechanisms of environmentally oriented traffic management measures through an environmental network design problem. An improved user equilibrium (UE) model was proposed to simulate the traffic state under traffic management measures and combine a traffic noise prediction model to obtain the noise distribution, while the environmental noise functional zone compliance was considered as the objective. A bilevel programming model was established to find the optimal solution for the acoustic environment and traffic under different strategy spaces. As results, with sufficient strategy space, speed limits can increase the compliance rate of the environmental noise functional zones from 53.7% to 100%, and flow limits can increase the compliance rate by 7.1%. With insufficient strategy space, collaborative control can achieve better environmental optimization than speed and flow limits, but there are serious traffic efficiency costs which travel time increases of 24%–45%. This is due to the detour phenomena under flow limits. In addition, road classification is an important control reference and coupling effects occur during the control of speed and flow limits. This study of the mechanism underlying the optimization of the acoustic environment under traffic management measures can provide theoretical guidance for planners.