Arc-based Traffic Assignment: Equilibrium Characterization and Learning

Arc-based traffic assignment models (TAMs) are a popular framework for modeling traffic network congestion generated by self-interested travelers who sequentially select arcs based on their perceived latency on the network. However, existing arc-based TAMs either assign travelers to cyclic paths, or do not extend to networks with bidirectional arcs (edges) between nodes. To overcome these difficulties, we propose a new modeling framework for stochastic arc-based TAMs. Given a traffic network with bidirectional arcs, we replicate its arcs and nodes to construct a directed acyclic graph (DAG), which we call the Condensed DAG (CoDAG) representation. Self-interested travelers sequentially select arcs on the CoDAG representation to reach their destination. We show that the associated equilibrium flow, which we call the Condensed DAG equilibrium, exists, is unique, and can be characterized as a strictly convex optimization problem. Moreover, we propose a discrete-time dynamical system that captures a natural adaptation rule employed by self-interested travelers to learn about the emergent congestion on the network. We show that the arc flows generated by this adaptation rule converges to a neighborhood of Condensed DAG equilibrium. To our knowledge, our work is the first to study learning and adaptation in an arc-based TAM. Finally, we present numerical results that corroborate our theoretical results.