An Efficient Method for Computing Traffic Equilibria in Networks with Asymmetric Transportation Costs

Abstract

In the presence of several user categories or transportation modes, or when transportation costs on each arc of a network depend on the flows on adjacent arcs, the traffic equilibrium problem may be expressed as a variational problem. Methods for determining traffic equilibria are then adaptations of techniques for solving variational inequalities. In this paper, we present a new convex optimization formulation for the general traffic equilibrium problem, and propose a simple iterative method for calculating traffic equilibria, which essentially involves postoptimizing a linear sub-problem at each iteration. Preliminary computational results are reported.