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Rationality of Urban Road Networks

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Rationality of Urban Road Networks

by

Kadir Akgol and Banihan Gunay

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 During the preparation of this book, the authors benefitted greatly from the discussions
took place at various MC Meetings of “Modelling Public Transport Passenger Flows in the
Era of Intelligent Transport Systems” (TUD COST Action 1004). In particular, colleagues
Sebastián Raveau, Ingmar Andreasson, Klaus Noekel, Michael GH Bell, Guido Gentile, and
Domokos Esztergár-Kiss deserve special thanks for their valuable comments.

© Copyright 2018 Kadir Akgol and Banihan Gunay

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 PREFACE

Circuitous portions of travel routes in urban areas pose negative effect on the
quality of road networks. Quantification of this has not been addressed adequately by
available literature. This book aims to develop a number of measuring scales for the
purpose of determining the acceptability levels of urban travel routes.
These scales will be introduced under four headings in the book:

(i) Distance as the Crow Flies,

(ii) Average Speed,
(iii) Alternative Routes, and
(iv) Angular Deflection.

In order to be able to evaluate all these scales simultaneously, a common scale has
also been discussed. This, therefore, enables us to compare the road networks of
various cities with varying size and geometry. These scales are then applied on 14
different cities around the world, namely, Ankara, Beijing, Birmingham, Istanbul,
London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Manchester, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Rome, Tehran
and Tokyo. The road networks belonging to these cities are ranked according to the
four rationality criteria introduced.
The book is an extended version of an earlier publication (Gunay et al., 2016)
where the fundamentals of these scales were first established.
Quantification of rationality in this context may also be achieved, based on Monte
Carlo simulation, through the generation of many random pairs of points within a
given predefined urban area. By means of this approach, limitations of using a circle
around a study area are easily overcome. Although a large amount of computing
skills and power is needed in this approach, it has many advantages. The discussion
of employing the Monte Carlo Simulation for this purpose is left outside the scope of
this book and will be published elsewhere.
The present book includes six chapters and seven appendices. All of the radar
graphs given in the book (Appendices 4 to 7) are also available online at
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z9qedc9x1akiphb/all_radar_graphs.pdf?dl=0.
Finally, we believe postgraduate students, researchers, modellers, developers and
practitioners will greatly benefit from the book.

January 2018, Antalya.

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4
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE...................................................................................................................... 3

LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................... 7

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................ 8

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................... 9

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 11

CHAPTER 2 DRAWING UP THE SCALES ........................................................... 15

The criterion of the Distance as the Crow Flies (CF) .................................................................. 15

The criterion of Average Speed (AS) .......................................................................................... 15

The criterion of Alternative Routes (AR) .................................................................................... 17

The criterion of Angular Deflection (AD) ................................................................................... 17

CHAPTER 3 THE CONCEPT OF RATIONALITY ................................................. 19

Systematic Point Selection ........................................................................................................... 19

Specifying the pairs of points and routes on the prototypical road network ................................ 19

CHAPTER 4 EQUILIBRIUM CASES AMONG ALTERNATIVE ROUTES ......... 24

CHAPTER 5 THE THRESHOLD VALUES OF RATIONALITY (TVR) ............... 27

CHAPTER 6 THE APPLICATION OF THE SCALES ON SAMPLE ROAD

NETWORKS ............................................................................................................... 31

CHAPTER 7 THE RESULTS ..................................................................................... 38

CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................... 40

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 42

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APPENDIX 1: COORDINATES CALCULATION TABLES .................................. 45

APPENDIX 2: ELEMENTS OF THE ROUTES CALCULATED IN GOOGLE

MAPS .......................................................................................................................... 60

APPENDIX 3: RATIONALITY VALUES ................................................................ 75

APPENDIX 4: DIRECTIONAL RATIONALITY ACCORDING TO THE

CRITERION OF THE DISTANCE AS THE CROW FLIES FROM CENTRE TO
PERIPHERY ............................................................................................................... 90

APPENDIX 5: DIRECTIONAL RATIONALITY ACCORDING TO THE

CRITERION OF THE DISTANCE AS THE CROW FLIES FROM PERIPHERY
TO CENTRE ............................................................................................................... 98

APPENDIX 6: DIRECTIONAL RATIONALITY ACCORDING TO THE

CRITERION OF THE ALTERNATIVE ROUTES ................................................. 106

APPENDIX 7: DIRECTIONAL RATIONALITY ACCORDING TO THE

CRITERION OF THE AVERAGE SPEED ............................................................. 114

INDEX ....................................................................................................................... 122

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 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Whereas the straight distance is only 1.5 km, the shortest route between an
origin and a destination is calculated as 4.5 km (Google Maps). ............................... 12
Figure 2: Three alternative routes (recommended by Google Maps) between a given
origin (O) and a destination (D) as an example (Birmingham, UK)........................... 16

Figure 3: The criterion of angular deflection (see Figure 2, the 1st alternative). ........ 18

Figure 4: Selection of the peripheral points and coordinate values in the radial system
(C for centre and P for periphery). .............................................................................. 20

Figure 5: An image of the index network (considered to be most rational) and the
Point Pairs, CPi............................................................................................................ 21

Figure 6: Alternative routes for a peripheral destination located away from a junction
..................................................................................................................................... 21
Figure 7: Different numbers of alternatives and route lengths but with the same
distances as the crow flies. .......................................................................................... 24
Figure 8: The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd alternative cases to be regarded as in equilibrium on the
prototypical road network in conjunction with Table 3. ............................................. 26

Figure 9: The relationship between dav/r and the number of alternatives ................... 26
Figure 10: Directional rationality according to the criterion of CF from centre to
periphery for Los Angeles. .......................................................................................... 36

Figure 11: The results of directional rationality according to the criterion of CF from
periphery to the centre of London (to scale). .............................................................. 37

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 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Various values for the routes computed for the prototypical road network
with a speed limit of 13.89 m/s. .................................................................................. 22
Table 2: Typical urban speed limits in various countries ........................................... 23
Table 3: The cases to be regarded as in equilibrium according to their route lengths
and numbers of alternatives. ........................................................................................ 25

Table 4: The threshold values of rationality................................................................ 27

Table 5: The table for the criteria of CF and AR. ....................................................... 29

Table 6: Cities selected for the study .......................................................................... 31

Table 7: Coordinates of the origins assumed to be the centres of the selected cities . 32
Table 8: Distances between city centres and the outer borders of main urban road
networks ...................................................................................................................... 32
Table 9: Calculation table of the coefficients of the coordinates ................................ 33

Table 10: Coefficients of the coordinates for the selected cities ................................ 34
Table 11: The coordinate values of points CP for Tokyo. .......................................... 34

Table 12: The values for the routes calculated in Google Maps for Tokyo as an
example........................................................................................................................ 35
Table 13: Values of rationality for Tokyo as an example. .......................................... 35

Table 14: All rationality values ................................................................................... 39

Table 15: Ranking of the cities by rationality (underlined cities are claimed to be
rational)........................................................................................................................ 39

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 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AD: The criterion of Angular Deflection

AR: The criterion of Alternative Routes
AS: The criterion of Average Speed
av: Average
C: Centre
CF: The criterion of Distance as the Crow Flies
CP: Centre-periphery pairs of points
GNP: Gross National Product
max: Maximum
min: Minimum
OD: Origin Destination
P: Periphery
TVR: The threshold values of rationality
: A variable depending on the desired number of point pairs
d: The length of a travel route
m: The slope of the CP line (See Figure 8)
n: The number of pairs of points (e.g. from centre to peripheral)
r: Distance as the crow flies
t: The journey time along a travel route
: Angular deflection

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