An Improved Social Pressure Algorithm for Static Deterministic User Equilibrium Traffic Assignment Problem

Abstract

This paper presents a path-based traffic assignment algorithm based on insights from the social pressure algorithm developed by Kupiszewska and Vliet (1998). The concept of social pressure is intuitive and has a behavioral interpretation: that drivers travelling on relatively expensive routes are more strongly inclined to shift routes compared to those travelling on routes with travel times closer to minimum route costs. The method proposed utilizes the concept of social pressure to solve the traffic assignment problem. While the approach is conceptually similar to that of Kupiszewska and Vliet, a key difference is that it simultaneously updates all paths with cost equal to or close to the minimum cost, thereby reducing the number of iterations. Numerical experiments are conducted using the Sioux Falls network data. The results obtained by solving the original social pressure algorithm and the proposed improved social pressure algorithm are compared. The results illustrate that the proposed algorithm has a faster rate of convergence. Further, they vindicate the notion that path-based algorithms represent a feasible deployment option under the computational capabilities available today.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.