Abstract
Traffic paradox is an important phenomenon which needs attention in transportation network design and traffic management. Previous studies on traffic paradox always examined user equilibrium (UE) or stochastic user equilibrium (SUE) conditions with a fixed traffic demand (FD) and set the travel costs of links as constants under the SUE condition. However, traffic demand is elastic, especially when there are new links added to the network that may induce new traffic demand, and the travel costs of links actually depend on the traffic flows on them. This paper comprehensively investigates the traffic paradox under different equilibrium conditions including the user equilibrium and the stochastic user equilibrium with a fixed and elastic traffic demand. Origin-destination (OD) mean unit travel cost (MUTC) has been chosen as the main index to characterize whether the traffic paradox occurs. The impacts of travelers’ perception errors and travel cost sensitivity on the occurrence of the traffic paradox are also analyzed. The conclusions show that the occurrence of the traffic paradox depends on the traffic demand and equilibrium conditions; higher perception errors of travelers may lead to a better network performance, and a higher travel cost sensitivity will create a reversed traffic paradox. Finally, several appropriate traffic management measures are proposed to avoid the traffic paradox and improve the network performance.
Highlights
Traffic paradox has been widely examined since it was first proposed by Braess in 1968 [1]
The applicability of the three indexes and the difference between them, including total travel cost, mean unit travel cost and traffic demand were analyzed in order to characterize whether the traffic paradox occurs
2) Three indexes, including total travel cost, mean unit travel cost and traffic demand are observed in order to characterize whether a traffic paradox occurs
Summary
Traffic paradox has been widely examined since it was first proposed by Braess in 1968 [1] As it is defined under the user equilibrium with the fixed demand (UE-FD) condition, the addition of a new link may result in a higher total network travel cost. Pas and Principio found that the occurrence of the paradox depends on the traffic demand, as it only occurs in a certain demand range [8], Yang and Bell proposed a traffic paradox based on network capacity [9], and Korilis made some suggestions on how to avoid Braess’ paradox [10] They are all conducted under the UE condition. Conclusions about the main results of this paper are presented
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