Optimal Design of Transportation Networks with Automated Vehicle Links and Congestion Pricing

Abstract

We propose a bi-level network design model comprising automated vehicle (AV) links and congestion pricing to improve traffic congestion. As upper-level road planners strive to minimize total travel-time costs by optimizing both the network design and the congestion pricing, lower-level travelers make choices about their routes to minimize their individual travel costs. Our proposed model integrates a network design and congestion pricing to improve traffic congestion and we use a relaxation-based method to solve the model. We conducted a series of numerical tests to analyze the proposed model and solution method. Our results indicate that network design is more effective than congestion pricing when the AV market penetration is high and the opposite is true when AV penetration is low. More importantly, we find that a network design of automated vehicle links with congestion pricing is superior to a single network design or congestion pricing, especially when both AVs and conventional vehicles have a relatively large market penetration.

A Simplified C-Logit Stochastic User Equilibrium Model on Bimodal Transportation Network

“…Congestion mitigation, environmental protection, and better travel quality provided on the road network is still an ever increasing concerned problem in the urban transportation system. Road congestion pricing has been viewed as an effective means to alleviate traffic congestion [26][27][28][29].…”

A bi‐level model to optimize road networks for a mixture of manual and automated driving: An evolutionary local search algorithm

“…(), and van Arem, van Driel, and Visser (). This has been utilized in some NDP studies that consider AVs via assumptions of increased capacity in presence of AVs (Chen et al., ; Chen et al., ; Ye & Wang, ) and some other studies of AV impacts using macroscopic traffic assignment models (Levin & Boyles, ; Madadi, van Nes, Snelder, & van Arem, ).…”

“…() where the authors proposed exclusive AV zones for urban road networks; for the AV zones with no CV access, a system optimal route choice was suggested, and for the other parts of the network, an MUC equilibrium was applied. Last, Ye and Wang () attempted to optimize urban road networks for AVs with a combination of exclusive AV links and congestion pricing for CVs using a bi‐level NDP.…”

“…Note that since static traffic assignments do not model traffic flow dynamics with a high level of details, capacity changes as a result of AD have been incorporated in static traffic assignment models in two different (simplified) manners; the first one is via assigning higher capacity to links that accommodate AVs which is more appropriate when considering dedicated lanes and links for AVs (Chen et al., ; Chen et al., ; Ye & Wang, ). The alternative is to consider an AV‐flow‐specific link travel time that is dependent on both cumulative flow of CVs and AVs on the link, and the ratio of CVs to AVs on the link (Levin & Boyles, ; Madadi et al., ).…”

“…This requires developing a vision for urban road networks and a strategic plan for its implementation. So far, dedicated lanes and links for AVs as well as dedicated AV zones have been suggested and briefly studied in the literature (Chen, He, Zhang, & Yin, ; Chen, He, Yin, & Du, ; Ye & Wang, ). We suggest an alternative network configuration for urban regions.…”