An N-path user equilibrium for transportation networks

The traditional trip-based approach to transportation modeling has been employed for the past decade. The last step of the trip-based modeling approach is traffic assignment, which has been typically formulated as a user equilibrium (UE) problem. In the conventional perspective, the definition of UE traffic assignment is the condition that no road user can unilaterally change routes to reduce their travel time. An equivalent definition is that the travel times of all the used paths between any given origin–destination pair are equal and less than those of the unused paths. The underlying assumption of the UE definition is that road users have full information on the available transportation paths and can potentially use any path if the currently used path is overly congested. However, a more practical scenario is that each road user has a limited path set within which she/he can choose routes from. In this new scenario, we call the resulting user equilibrium an N-path user equilibrium (NPUE), in which each road user has only N paths to select from when making route choices in the network. We introduce a new formulation of the NPUE and derive optimality conditions based on this formulation. Different from traditional modeling framework, the constraints of the proposed model are of linear form, which makes it possible to solve the problem with conventional convex programming techniques. We also show that the traditional UE is a special case of an NPUE and prove the uniqueness of the resulting flow pattern of the NPUE. To efficiently solve this problem, we devise path-based and link-based solution algorithms. The proposed solution algorithms are empirically applied to networks of various sizes to examine the impact of constrained user path sets. Numerical results demonstrate that NPUE results can differ significantly from UE results depending on the number of paths available to road users. In addition, we observed an interesting phenomenon, where increasing the number of paths available to road users can sometimes decrease the overall system performance due to their selfish routing behaviors. This paradox demonstrates that network information should be provided with caution, as such information can do more harm than good in certain transportation systems.     

考虑多仓库的共享单车重新配置问题研究

共享单车是我国大力提倡的低碳交通出行模式,加快共享单车发展是解决最后一公里、城市拥堵和环境污染等问题的重要途径。由于人们停放共享单车的无规律性,使得共享单车系统中各车桩的单车库存量存在不平衡。如何合理的对车桩中的单车进行重新调配,来满足用户的需求,是相关企业亟待解决的问题。共享单车的调配路线优化是优化车桩库存量的重要手段之一。本文研究多仓库条件下的货车调配路线优化问题,建立了一个混合整数非线性规划模型。不同于传统的路径优化问题的研究大多是以成本或时间为目标,本文采用基于车桩库存量的非线性惩罚函数来表示用户需求,从而使得所研究的问题是一个凸函数优化问题。为了简化本文的问题,将目标函数分段线性化。基于车桩网络的特点,设计了变邻域搜索算法,以及构建初始解的贪婪算法。最后,以某共享单车公司为例,进行算例分析,来说明模型和算法的合理性和有效性。     

Routing strategies for integrating forward distribution and reverse collection

Due to the significant growth in the demand for logistics services and the ongoing trend towards the outsourcing of logistics activities, logistics service providers have concurrently gained a significant profit-making opportunity and faced the unprecedented challenge of surviving in the midst of increasingly fierce market competition. This research thus aims to propose routing strategies that optimally integrate forward distribution and reverse collection to help logistics service providers reduce their operating costs when providing transportation services, and thus improve their market competitive power. The integrated routing problem is formulated as the mixed pickup-delivery asymmetric traveling salesman path problem. The problem is NP-hard and new in the literature. Therefore, the objectives of this research are to first model the problem and then develop an efficient and effective heuristic solution algorithm to the problem.     

Static and dynamic routing under disjoint dominant extreme demands

This paper considers a special case of the robust network design problem where the dominant extreme points of the demand polyhedron have a disjoint support. In this case static and dynamic routing lead to the same optimal solution, both for the splittable and the unsplittable case. As a consequence, the robust network design problem with (splittable) dynamic routing is polynomially solvable, whereas it is co-NP-hard in the general case. This result applies to particular instances of the single-source Hose model.     

A modified Physarum-inspired model for the user equilibrium traffic assignment problem

The user equilibrium traffic assignment principle is very important in the traffic assignment problem. Mathematical programming models are designed to solve the user equilibrium problem in traditional algorithms. Recently, the Physarum shows the ability to address the user equilibrium and system optimization traffic assignment problems. However, the Physarum model are not efficient in real traffic networks with two-way traffic characteristics and multiple origin–destination pairs. In this article, a modified Physarum-inspired model for the user equilibrium problem is proposed. By decomposing traffic flux based on origin nodes, the traffic flux from different origin–destination pairs can be distinguished in the proposed model. The Physarum can obtain the equilibrium traffic flux when no shorter path can be discovered between each origin–destination pair. Finally, numerical examples demonstrate the rationality and convergence properties of the proposed model.     

Large margin shortest path routing

A new discriminative approach to routing inspired by the large margin criterion serving as a basis for support vector machines is presented. The proposed formulation uses the benefit of the dualization convex program, and it is possible for standard solvers to learn the weighting metrics of the shortest path routing. In order to demonstrate this and due to its simplicity, the single path flow allocation problem is considered in this article. It was found that the weight settings performed within a few percent of that of the optimal general routing where the flow for each demand was optimally distributed over all paths between the source and destination.     

On the Hardness of Equal Shortest Path Routing

In telecommunication networks packets are carried from a source s to a destination t on a path that is determined by the underlying routing protocol. Most routing protocols belong to the class of shortest path routing protocols. In such protocols, the network operator assigns a length to each link. A packet going from s to t follows a shortest path according to these lengths. For better protection and efficiency, one wishes to use multiple (shortest) paths between two nodes. Therefore the routing protocol must determine how the traffic from s to t is distributed among the shortest paths. In the protocol called OSPF-ECMP (for Open Shortest Path First-Equal Cost Multiple Path) the traffic incoming at every node is uniformly balanced on all outgoing links that are on shortest paths. In that context, the operator task is to determine the “best” link lengths, toward a goal such as maximizing the network throughput for given link capacities.In this work, we show that the problem of maximizing even a single commodity flow for the OSPF-ECMP protocol cannot be approximated within any constant factor ratio. Besides this main theorem, we derive some positive results which include polynomial-time approximations and an exponential-time exact algorithm. We also prove that despite their weakness, our approximation and exact algorithms are, in a sense, the best possible.     

An optimal greedy routing algorithm for triangulated polygons

In this paper, we prove that a triangulated polygon G admits a greedy embedding into an appropriate semi-metric space such that using an appropriate distance definition, for any two vertices u and w in G, a most virtual distance decreasing path is always a minimum-edge path between u and w. Therefore, our greedy routing algorithm is optimal. The greedy embedding of G can be obtained in linear time. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first optimal greedy routing algorithm for a nontrivial subcategory of graphs.     

Path problems in generalized stars, complete graphs, and brick wall graphs

Path problems such as the maximum edge-disjoint paths problem, the path coloring problem, and the maximum path coloring problem are relevant for resource allocation in communication networks, in particular all-optical networks. In this paper, it is shown that maximum path coloring can be solved optimally in polynomial time for bidirected generalized stars, even in the weighted case. Furthermore, the maximum edge-disjoint paths problem is proved NP-hard for complete graphs (undirected or bidirected), a constant-factor off-line approximation algorithm is presented for the weighted case, and an on-line algorithm with constant competitive ratio is given for the unweighted case. Finally, an open problem concerning the existence of routings that simultaneously minimize the maximum load and the number of colors is solved: an example for a graph and a set of requests is given such that any routing that minimizes the maximum load requires strictly more colors for path coloring than a routing that minimizes the number of colors.     

Ranking paths in stochastic time-dependent networks

In this paper we address optimal routing problems in networks where travel times are both stochastic and time-dependent. In these networks, the best route choice is not necessarily a path, but rather a time-adaptive strategy that assigns successors to nodes as a function of time. Nevertheless, in some particular cases an origin–destination path must be chosen a priori, since time-adaptive choices are not allowed. Unfortunately, finding the a priori shortest path is an NP-hard problem.     

Incorporating transfer reliability into equilibrium analysis of railway passenger flow

Passenger’s transfer route choice behavior is one of the prominent research topics in the field of railway transportation. Existing traffic assignment approaches do not properly account for passenger’s expectation for transfer reliability. In this study, the transfer reliability is explicitly defined and a multi-class user equilibrium model is established, given which passengers choose the minimal-cost path based on their expected reliability thresholds. In particular, a path-based traffic assignment algorithm which combines a k-shortest path algorithm and the method of successive averages is proposed. The validity of the proposed approach is verified by an illustrative example. Using the proposed modeling approach, it is possible to determine the passenger’s collective route choice behavior based on the user equilibrium pattern. Moreover, the railway timetables can be evaluated and optimized based on the cost-based level of service estimation.     

User equilibria for a parallel queueing system with state dependent routing

Consider a system of two queues in parallel, one of which is a ⋅|M|1 single-server infinite capacity queue, and the other a ⋅|G ^(N)|∞ batch service queue. A stream of general arrivals choose which queue to join, after observing the current state of the system, and so as to minimize their own expected delay. We show that a unique user equilibrium (user optimal policy) exists and that it possesses various monotonicity properties, using sample path and coupling arguments. This is a very simplified model of a transportation network with a choice of private and public modes of transport. Under probabilistic routing (which is equivalent to the assumption that users have knowledge only of the mean delays on routes), the network may exhibit the Downs–Thomson paradox observed in transportation networks with expected delay increasing as the capacity of the ⋅|M|1 queue (private transport) is increased. We give examples where state-dependent routing mitigates the Downs–Thomson effect observed under probabilistic routing, and providing additional information on the state of the system to users reduces delay considerably.     

应急救援物资紧缺的配送车辆路径选择研究

针对应急救援物资总量紧缺不能全部满足各点需求量的实际情形,以单个需求点最大缺货量最小为目标,建立基于单个配送中心、车辆数目有限和带时间窗的应急救援物资配送车辆路径选择模型,并讨论了三种不同缺货情形下模型的求解。对于车辆按最短路径行驶也无法在救援时间内到达导致需求点缺货的情形,删除这些需求点的需求量后,如果剩余需求点的需求量不大于物资总量且车辆足够多,可转化为车辆最短路径问题求解;对于物资紧缺无法满足所有需求且车辆足够多的情形,设计时间复杂性为O(mn²)的精确算法A^*求解,其中m和n分别为车辆数和需求点数;对于物资紧缺且车辆数目不足无法把全部物资送达需求点的情形,设计时间复杂性为O(n²)的近似算法GA^*求解,并分析了算法GA^*的近似比。最后结合云南彝良县地震灾区局部路网进行实例分析,验证模型和算法的有效性。     

The Downs-Thomson Paradox: Existence, Uniqueness and Stability of User Equilibria

Consider a network where two routes are available for users wishing to travel from a source to a destination. On one route (which could be viewed as private transport) service slows as traffic increases. On the other (which could be viewed as public transport) the service frequency increases with demand. The Downs-Thomson paradox occurs when improvements in service produce an overall decline in performance as user equilibria adjust. Using the model proposed by Calvert [10], with a ⋅|M|1 queue corresponding to the private transport route, and a bulk-service infinite server queue modelling the public transport route, we give a complete analysis of this system in the setting of probabilistic routing. We obtain the user equilibria (which are not always unique), and determine their stability.AMS subject classification: 60K30, 90B15, 90B20, 91A10, 91A13This revised version was published online in June 2005 with corrected coverdate     

Multiple voting location and single voting location on trees

We examine voting location problems in which the goal is to place, based on an election amongst the users, a given number of facilities in a graph. The user preference is modeled by shortest path distances in the graph. A Condorcet solution is a set of facilities to which there does not exist an alternative set preferred by a majority of the users. Recent works generalize the model to additive indifference and replaced user majority by γ-proportion.     

基于Voronoi划分的同城即时配送优化策略研究

近年来经济社会发展及新零售业强势崛起使得平台或商家对大规模即时配送需求日益增加,在求解大规模车辆路径问题时仅使用启发式算法或其融合算法已无法满足实际需求。本文针对基于分众级的同城即时配送模式及现阶段存在的问题,确定了基于Voronoi划分算法的即时配送分区方法和对基础蚁群算法的三个改进策略;并以全程配送产生的总成本最少为目标函数,构建了带用户需求软时间窗的车辆路径问题数学模型;最后选取客户、车辆以及门店共计一百二十个真实地理位置数据,验证了本文提出的求解策略的有效性,并分析最终结果。结果显示,①使用Voronoi分区-改进蚁群算法的两阶段方法求解大规模车辆路径问题能显著减少配送总成本,同时提升客户满意度;②在多门店的条件假设下,采用改进蚁群算法求解得到的超时时间比基础蚁群算法少36%,配送总成本低17%。     

A post-optimization method for the routing and wavelength assignment problem applied to scheduled lightpath demands

We consider here a NP-hard problem related to the Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA) problem in optical networks, dealing with Scheduled Lightpath Demands (SLDs). An SLD is a connection demand between two nodes of the network, during a certain time. Given a set of SLDs, we want to assign a lightpath, i.e. a routing path and a wavelength, to each SLD, so that the total number of required wavelengths is minimized. The constraints are the following: a same wavelength must be assigned all along the edges of the routing path of any SLD; at any time, a given wavelength on a given edge of the network cannot be used to satisfy more than one SLD. To solve this problem, we design a post-optimization method improving the solutions provided by a heuristic. The experimental results show that this post-optimization method is quite efficient to reduce the number of necessary wavelengths.     

On a bi-dimensional dynamic alternative routing method

The analysis of a bi-dimensional dynamic routing model for alternative routing telecommunication networks led to the identification of an instability problem in the synchronous path selection associated with the complex interdependencies among the coefficients of the objective functions and the computed paths for every node pair. In this paper an analytical model enabling to make explicit this problem and evaluate its effects in terms of two global network criteria, is presented. Also a heuristic procedure dedicated to overcome this instability problem and select “good” compromise solutions in terms of network performance is developed. Finally the performance of the proposed routing method using the heuristic is compared by recurring to discrete-event simulation with a reference dynamic routing method (Real Time Network Routing) for some test networks.     

A New Multiobjective Dynamic Routing Method for Multiservice Networks: Modelling and Performance

There are potential advantages in formulating the routing problems in modern multiservice networks as multiple objective problems. This paper presents a novel hierarchical bi-level multiobjective dynamic routing model for multiservice networks. It is based on a bi-objective shortest path algorithm, with dynamically adapted soft-constraints, to compute alternative paths for each node pair and on a heuristic to synchronously select alternative routing plans for the network in a dynamic alternative routing context. It is a routing method which periodically changes alternative paths as a function of periodic updates of certain QoS related parameters obtained from real-time measurements. The performance of the proposed routing method is compared with two reference dynamic routing methods namely RTNR and DAR by means of a discrete-event simulator.A previous short version of this work was presented at INOC’03 (International Network Optimisation Conference). Work partially supported by programme POSI of the III EC programme cosponsored by FEDER and national funds.     

Maritime crude oil transportation - A split pickup and split delivery problem

The maritime oil tanker routing and scheduling problem is known to the literature since before 1950. In the presented problem, oil tankers transport crude oil from supply points to demand locations around the globe. The objective is to find ship routes, load sizes, as well as port arrival and departure times, in a way that minimizes transportation costs. We introduce a path flow model where paths are ship routes. Continuous variables distribute the cargo between the different routes. Multiple products are transported by a heterogeneous fleet of tankers. Pickup and delivery requirements are not paired to cargos beforehand and arbitrary split of amounts is allowed. Small realistic test instances can be solved with route pre-generation for this model. The results indicate possible simplifications and stimulate further research.