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Trip Assignment
This week we will review the final step of the four step transportation forecasting model, trip
assignment (or otherwise commonly known as traffic assignment).
Trip Assignment
The final step of the forecasting process is trip assignment which concerns the selection of
routes for the trips distributed (accounting for different modes) between origins and
destinations of the transport network. Trip assignment answers the question Which route
will people choose to get from their origin to their destination? Trip assignment outputs
measures of network performance, such as total system travel time.
Trip assignment can be vastly complex problem (consider the Sydney area where there are
an estimated 1.8M vehicle trips during the morning peak!). Therefore, planning models
usually make use of more simplified models based on Wardrops (descriptive) principle of
equilibrium. Recall:
The travel time on all used paths between an origin and a destination point are equal and
less than those which would be experienced by a single vehicle on any unused path, i.e., no
traveller can improve their travel time by unilaterally changing routes.
Question 1
3 4
2
Figure 1. The network of interest
Assume that the demand between nodes 1 and 4 is 14 = 2000 / and between
nodes 2 and 4 is 24 = 1000 /. The link performance functions are given below,
where represents travel time on a link and represents link flow.
13 = 0.5 + 0.00113
23 = 0.5 + 0.00123
14 = 1.0 + 0.000514
24 = 1.0 + 0.00124
34 = 1.0 + 0.00234
First, write down the User Equilibrium equations. Then solve for equilibrium volumes and
travel times.
Solution
User equilibrium means that the travel times on all used routes are the same. Therefore:
14 = 13 + 34
24 = 23 + 34
14 + 13 = 14
24 + 23 = 24
Also consider the network. The flow on 1,3 and 2,3 must be equal to the flow on 1,4:
13 + 23 = 34
Consider:
14 13 = 24 23
0.514 13 = 24 23
14 = 13 + 34
Substitute [A]
3
500 = 3.513 + 13
2
13 = 100
Then find that 13 = 0.6 also find that 23 = 75 and therefore 23 = 0.575
24 = 24 + 23 24 = 925 24 = 1.925
And
34 = 175 34 = 1.35
= 13 13 + 23 23 + 14 14 + 24 24 + 34 34
Question 2
Part of solving for the conditions of user equilibrium involves solving for the shortest path.
Solution
1. Set labels for all nodes excluding the origin node to a very large number
(infinity) and set the origin label to be zero.
2. Select the minimum label from all the remaining nodes (initially among all of
the nodes) and set as a permanent label.
Here is the shortest path tree solution. Let students have a try and then go over it by hand.
You just solve by adding up link costs. The numbers listed by the nodes are the costs.
1 16 19
1 13 42
Assign this demand to the shortest path. What is the flow on each link? Which links are the
most congested? Discuss how the resulting cost in this problem is different from what
happens on actual traffic networks
Solution:
2 24
2 4
3 1
1 1 2 2
2 3 4
1 2 13
1 3 3
3
And assume that there are 10 units traveling from 1-4, and 10 units traveling from 1-5. Use
the MSA method to find the equilibrium flows.
Solution:
Iteration 0:
Set flows to 0 (free flow) and calculate link costs:
Iteration 1:
Find shortest path given fixed costs
So, we begin with Iteration 0. If we set all the flows to zero, we obtain the following link costs:
2
2 4
1 1 2
1
3
Now on to iteration 1:
If we assign all 10 units of flow of each OD to the shortest paths, the new costs will be:
1 1 32
41
1
3
Now on to iteration 2:
- The shortest paths will be:
1 to 4 -> 1-2-4
1 to 5 -> 1-2-3-5
We average the solution from the previous iteration by 1/2 and the new shortest path flows
by 1/2.
Using these path flows we update the link costs and get the following costs:
2 4
13
1 11 1
21
4
3
IMPORTANT NOTE: Just because the shortest paths were the same in two consecutive
iterations does not mean the problem has converged.
We will now AVERAGE our previous two solutions (2/3 weight to solution 2, 1/3 weight to the
new paths).
Using these path flows we update the link costs and get the following costs:
.
8.66667
2 4
13
1 7.666667 12
21
41
3 5
Now on to iteration 4,
We will now AVERAGE our previous two solutions (3/4 weight to solution 3, 1/4 weight to the
new paths).
And we continue to do this procedure until convergence. The convergence of the algorithm
will be seen when the change between solution "n" and solution "n+1" is small enough.
Again, this is not to be confused with the change between the shortest path at iteration n and
the shortest path at iteration n+1, as this will not indicate convergence.