52 GLTMandDUE (DTA2008)

The General Link Transmission Modelfor Dynamic Network Loadingand a comparison with the DUE algorithm

Guido Gentile

Dipartimento di Idraulica Trasporti e Strade, Sapienza Università di RomaVia Eudossiana, 18 – 00184 Roma, Italy. guido.gentile@uniroma1.it

Abstract

The Continuous Dynamic Network Loading problem is here addressed for giv-en splitting rates, hence allowing for implicit path enumeration. To this aim, a ma-croscopic flow model for road links based on the Kinematic Wave Theory is cou-pled with a node model with priority rules at intersections, thus reproducingcongested networks including queue spillback. The result is the General Link Transmission Model (GLTM), which extends previous results to the case of anyconcave fundamental diagram and node topology, without introducing spatial dis-cretization of links into cells. The GLTM is compared with the DUE algorithm interms of solution accuracy, computation efficiency and memory usage.

Keywords

: dynamic traffic assignment, queue spillback, implicit path enumera-tion with splitting rates, macroscopic flow model with concave fundamental dia-gram, kinematic wave theory with cumulative flows.

1 Introduction

In the context of within-day Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) the spatialpropagation of flows takes a time which depends on the use of the network. TheContinuous Dynamic Network Loading (CDNL) problem (see for example [1])consists in determining the link flows corresponding to given transport demandand route choices through a performance model yielding travel times as a functionof flows, where all such variables are temporal profiles.Route choices may be defined globally as path probabilities, or approximatedlocally as splitting rates, either in terms of turn probabilities or in terms of arcconditional probabilities at nodes. Under the assumption that all users of a givenclass directed to a same destination make the same route choices in probabilisticterms, once they have reached the same node of the network at the same time of

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the day, regardless the path followed till that point (i.e. they behave according to asequential approach), splitting rates distinguished by destination can well repro-duce path probabilities, thus allowing for implicit path enumeration. It’s worthnoting that for deterministic and logit route choices the sequential approach isequivalent to the classic joint approach [2]. If the splitting rates are not destinationspecific, then the consistency with the o-d demand flows is not guaranteed in cor-respondence of travel time variations; nevertheless, in some applications thisrough approximation is acceptable and allows for the solution of the problem onlarge networks with a fine-grained time discretization.The main traffic facts that should inform the performance model are the preva-lence of vehicle queues (hypercritical congestion) with their backward propaga-tion, called spillback, specially in the urban context, and the difference in the de-sired speed among drivers (hypocritical congestion), specially in the extra-urbancontext.These phenomena are satisfactorily reproduced through the Theory of Kine-matic Waves (KWT), which implements on each link the macroscopic flow para-digm of representing vehicles as a partially compressible mono-dimensional fluid,and through its network extension which requires a node model to propagate flowstates among adjacent links involving priority rules. However, many authors ad-dressing DTA encourage the use of a simplified model reproducing only verticalqueues without spillback and hypocritical congestion, where the main state vari-able becomes the link occupancy [3], since its separability in time and space al-lows for an easier formulation of the problem. The most popular approach to solvethe CDNL based on the simplified KWT, where the fundamental diagram has bydefinition a triangular shape, is the Cell Transmission Model (CTM) proposed byDaganzo [4], [5]. The CTM, besides the limitation from the modelling point of view regarding the shape of the fundamental diagram, from a computational pointof view suffers the spatial discretization of links both in terms of efficiency andaccuracy.Recently, a new approach has been developed by Yperman [6] to address on anetwork the simplified KWT without spatial discretization of links into cells,therefore called the Link Transmission Model (LTM), which is based on the solu-tion in terms of the cumulative flows proposed by Newell [7]. Independently, we[8] have proposed a similar approach to solve the CDNL in the case where thefundamental diagram is any concave function.In this paper we present the General Link Transmission Model (GLTM), that isthe extension of the LTM to any concave fundamental diagram and node topol-ogy, and compare it with the DUE algorithm proposed in [9] and implemented inVisum [10]. The GLTM has been applied to practical instances of the CDNLproblem on large real datasets in the context of traffic signal setting [11] and info-mobility [12] proving to be robust and efficient.

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2 Macroscopic models

The link performance models aimed at reproducing travel times as a function of link flows under the macroscopic fluid paradigm can be classified into two groups:space-continuous and space-discrete.Space-continuous models are typically formulated as a system of differentialequations in time and space, which is solved through finite difference methods.Such models yield accurate results, but require considerable computing resources,since their algorithmic implementation relies on a dense space discretization; forthis reason they are also referred to as point-based. Altogether, they are very effec-tive but poorly efficient. Among them, besides the CTM, we recall METANET,proposed in [13], which derives from a second order approximation of vehicle tra- jectories.Space-discrete models do not require any space discretization, and for this rea-son are also referred to as link-based. They can be in turn divided into whole link models and wave models.Whole link models (e.g. [14] and [15]) yield link performances as a function of the space-average density (i.e. the number of vehicles on the link) without consid-ering the propagation of flow states along the link. But this way the representationof hypocritical congestion becomes more and more ineffective as the length of thelink increases, so that they may be suitable only to represent hypercritical conges-tion in terms of vertical queues on short links [16]; on the other hand, since spill-back is not considered, queues shall not be longer than links. Despite such majordeficiencies, these models are widely used in DTA because of their simplicity(e.g. [17] and [18]).Wave models, based on the KWT, take (implicitly) into account the propaga-tion of flow states, yielding link performances as a function of the traffic condi-tions that the vehicle encounters by traveling along the link. They require minimalcomputing resources, while yielding realistic results both in urban and extra-urbancontexts. These models have been first developed for bottlenecks with constantcapacity, as in [19], [20] and [21]; that is, when only two speeds may occur on thelink: the free-flow speed and the queue speed. Recently, in [22] and [9], they havebeen extended to the case of long links and time-varying capacity.

3 Review of the Kinematic Wave Theory based on cumulative flows

The link is assumed to be a homogenous channel of length

L

> 0, whose physi-cal capacity is reduced at the initial and end points by two time-varying bottle-necks, called respectively the entry capacity and the exit capacity.The cumulative flow

N

(

x

,

τ

) is the number of vehicles that passed point

x

∈

[0,

L

]before time

τ

. This function is actually discontinuous, but we can consider asmooth approximation that makes it C

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without changing the essence of the traffic

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