Urban Networks with Ring Roads: Two-Level, Three-Player Game

Abstract

The integrated traffic control and traffic assignment problem is studied for a situation with two road authorities. Road authorities try to optimize their own objectives, and the same is done by road users. The result is a two-level, three-player multistage optimization problem with complete information. Game theory gives a suitable framework to analyze the problem and to find solutions for different situations such as no cooperation, cooperation between the two authorities, and a system optimum in which all actors cooperate to minimize the total costs for all travelers. Two approaches are used: an analytical approach and one based on a simulation and assignment framework. Both approaches are described and used to study a simple example, for which the results are given and discussed. The results show that separate or integrated anticipatory control gives better results than iterative reaction to the current situation. If one road authority takes the lead and anticipates the reactions of both the road users and the other road authority, a suboptimum is reached. The model calculations provide evidence that cooperation of road authorities improves utilization of the infrastructure and that global optimization does not necessarily result in a worse situation for one road authority.

Solving the Integrated Corridor Control Problem Using Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation

“…Conforming to the loading interval, the model divides every road section of the network into homogeneous segments called cells, in a way that the cell length equals the distance traversed by one typical vehicle at free flow speed in one loading interval. The flows are updated by the following difference equations: Essentially equation (4) tells that the number of vehicles staying in cell i at loading interval 1 + t is the number of vehicles from interval t plus the incoming vehicles and minus the outgoing vehicles. Daganzo [18] extended the model to a general network by carefully dividing various roadway junctions into basic merges and diverges.…”

“…A corridor usually includes various types of facilities (e.g., freeway sections, ramps and urban streets), which are typically managed by different agencies and jurisdictions. In current practices, most corridors are operated separately with little consideration to the coordination of individual facilities [2][3], although it has long been recognized that integrating the control measures can improve the operational performance of the entire corridor (e.g., [4]). …”

To Adapt or Not to Adapt – Consequences of Adapting Driver and Traffic Light Agents

“…In [16] a two-level, three-player game is discussed that integrates traffic control and traffic assignment, i.e. both, the control of Traffic Lights and the route choices by drivers are considered.…”

“…In the present paper, we want to depart from both, the two-route scenario and the assumption that traffic management centres are in charge of the control of Traffic Lights. Rather, we follow a trend of decentralization, in which each traffic light is able to sense its environment and react accordingly and autonomously, without having its actions computed by a central manager as it is the case in [16]. Moreover, it is questionable whether the same mechanism can be used in more complex scenarios, as claimed.…”

Large-Scale Multi-Agent Simulations for Transportation Applications

“…For example, there could be travelers that adapt to measures of a traffic management center, and the traffic management center could react to the behavior of the travelers. Depending on "who learns faster," 745 the results can be quite different (e.g., Zuylen and Taale, 2004;Nagel, Strauss, and Shubik in press). The issue is related to "sequential games," "subgame perfection," and "Stackelberg games" in game theory.…”