The Continuous Network Design Problem under the Traffic Network with Guidance System

Abstract

Route guidance and information systems are developed and popularly applied to help travelers to make route decisions today. Such devices can present information or give recommendations, so they have influence on the travelers travel choice in the traffic network. In this sense, the influence of guidance system on travelers’ route choice should be considered when the scenario of traffic network design is developed. However, few of existing traffic network design problem model considers the effect, and this motivates us to develop a Continuous Network Design (CNDP) model under a traffic network with guidance system. This study is based on the research of Jahn et al. (2005) to develop a single level program for CNDP under the traffic network with guidance system. The guidance system give advices to travelers based on system optimal rules with user constrains. From the result of simulation, it can be inferred that if the tolerance factor φ is properly chosen in our CNDP model, travelers all can decrease their travel time after network design than that they experienced at user equilibrium before network enhancement. That is to say, every traveler can profit from our CNDP scenario for proper tolerance factor φ.