Traffic flow on transportation networks

Abstract

This book, which was designed by the author as a primary text for his courses at the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Berkeley, explains in detail the advantages and limitations of network analysis applied to transportation problems.In particular, it discusses and analyzes various issues that are relevant to the traffic assignment problem: Given the rates at which travelers make trips between various origins and destinations, how will traffic distribute itself over a given network, and how does this distribution depend upon the geometry of the network?The book discusses conventional mathematical preliminaries to formulating and solving the problem--graphs, metrics, flows, shortest paths, and the like--which are primarily oriented toward solving the problem by computer. However, it also places considerable emphasis on evaluating flows by analytic methods applied to idealized networks (for example, rectangular or radial grids) in order to illustrate how the flow depends upon certain geometrical properties of the network.The book's particular contribution is in exploiting the characteristics of transportation networks to devise simple methods of analysis and to facilitate intuitive understanding of the patterns of flow on these networks. All of the mathematical concepts are self-contained.Contents: Preface and Summary; Transportation Planning; Mathematical Abstractions (elementary definitions and properties of graphs, especially the notion of routes and accessibility); Metrics and Shortest Routes; Other Methods (describes the metric--travel time--on networks of various idealized geometries); Approximations and Idealizations; Flows on Networks; Traffic Assignment; Assignments on Idealized Networks; Nonidentical Travelers; Optimal Network Geometry, Nonconvex Objective Functions; Chapter references and problems; Index.Traffic Flow on Transportation Networks is recommended for use as a primary text for first- or second-year graduate courses in transportation engineering and as supplementary reading for other courses in transportation. The material it covers will interest academic, industrial, and government transportation planners, as well as professionals and students in operations research.This is the fifth book in the MIT Press Series in Transportation Studies.

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