A Game-Theoretic Approach to the Analysis of Traffic Assignment

Abstract

In order to improve the cooperation between traffic management and travellers, traffic assignment is the key component. In terms of the traffic assignment, it can be classified into two models based on the behavior assumption governing route choices: the User Equilibrium (UE) and System Optimum (SO) traffic assignment. By the definition of UE and SO traffic assignment, traffic users usually competitively choose the least cost routes to minimize their own travel cost, while system optimum traffic assignment requires traffic users work cooperatively to minimize overall cost in road network. Thus, the paradox of benefits between UE and SO makes both of them are not practical. Thus, a solution technique needs to be proposed to balance between UE and SO models, which can compromise both sides and give more feasible traffic assignments. In this paper, Stackelberg game theory is introduced to the traffic assignment, which can achieve the trade-off process between traffic management and travellers. Since the traditional traffic assignments have low convergence rates, the gradient projection algorithm is proposed to improve the efficiency of the traffic assignment.