Two-way road network design problem with variable lanes

Abstract

This paper studies a new form of transportation network design problem. In urban transportation network, unreasonable phenomenon can occur in certain traffic period (e.g. on/off duty period), which demonstrates that the flows of opposite directions on a two-way road are seriously asymmetric; one traffic link of a two-way road congest heavily but the other is hardly used. In order to reduce transportation congestion and make full use of the existing road resources, we propose a lane reallocating approach in peak period, and establish a discrete bi-level programming model for the decision-making. Then, based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique, a heuristic solution algorithm for the bi-level model is designed. Finally, the lane reallocating approach is demonstrated through a simple transportation network.