Joint optimisation of park-and-ride facility locations and alternate traffic restriction scheme under equilibrium flows

Abstract

Alternate traffic restriction (ATR) or road space rationing schemes manage traffic congestion by prohibiting a proportion of cars from entering a predetermined ATR area during designated time periods or days. Under the ATR scheme, Park-and-Ride (P&R) often becomes more popular as travelers are able to take advantage of driving on non-restricted roads while they can park their cars at P&R facilities and do not need to drive into the predetermined ATR area. This paper proposes a joint optimization model of P&R facility locations and the ATR scheme, which optimally designs the ATR areas, the proportion of private cars to be restricted, and the P&R facility locations. In particular, a multi-objective bi-level model is established. The upperlevel model minimizes the total travel cost, minimizes the total emission cost, and maximizes consumer surplus. The lower-level model characterizes the user equilibrium of travel mode choices (i.e., private car mode, public transport mode, and P&R mode) and the route choices.The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is adapted to solve the proposed multi-objective bi-level model, where a gradient project algorithm is proposed for solving the lower-level user equilibrium with both mode choices and route choices. Numerical studies are conducted to test and illustrate the applicability of the model and algorithms.