Transportation Network Design Problem Based On The Variable Lane Optimization

"Tidal Traffic" is a typical phenomenon in urban road network, which results in great imbalance of bi-direction traffic flow, i.e., heavy congestion occurs in one direction of a road, but the traffic flow is very light in the other direction. To overcome the unreasonable road utilization and traffic congestion due to "Tidal Traffic", this thesis studied transportation network design problems with consideration of the optimization of variable lanes. which aims to obtain both the optimal lane expanding scheme and the optimal settings of variable lanes are. The main contents of the thesis are summarized as follows:(1) This thesis proposed a transportation network design problem (NDP) with consideration of optimization of variable lanes, which aims to improve traffic efficiency by designing reasonable road network expansion and lane allocation. A bi-level programming model is developed to describe the proposed NDP, The upper level problem formulates optimal lane expansion program aiming to minimize the sum of total system travel cost and total investment cost in system, and it also has optimal settings of variable lanes in different time period about different traffic demand levels in morning and evening peak. The lower level problem is formulated as a user equilibrium (UE) traffic assignment model to describe travelers’route choice behavior during different traffic demand periods. An Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm and Genetic Algorithm are introduced to solve the proposed bi-level model. Finally, a numerical example is developed to test and verify the effectiveness of the model and algorithm.(2) This thesis proposed a bi-objective transportation network design considering optimization of variable lanes on the basis of previous study, it aims to improve the efficiency of traffic network and decrease the vehicle carbon dioxide emissions in transportation system by reasonable road expansion and path allocation plan, which built a bi-objective and bi-level program to describe this traffic network design problem. The upper level problem is formulated as a minimum of total travel and investment cost and vehicle carbon dioxide emissions in transportation system; The lower level problem is formulated as a UE traffic assignment model to describe travelers’ route choice behavior during different traffic demand periods. An ABC algorithm is introduced to solve the proposed bi-level model. Finally, a numerical example is developed to test and verify the effectiveness of the model and algorithm.