An informed user equilibrium dynamic traffic assignment problem in a multiple origin-destination stochastic network

We develop in this paper a comprehensive linear mathematical framework to study the benefit of real-time information and the impact of resulting user adaptive route choice behaviours on network performance. The framework formulates the information-based stochastic user equilibrium (ISUE) dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) problem for a multiple origin-destination (OD) network. Using the framework, we prove the linkage between the user equilibrium (UE) and system optimal (SO) solutions underpinned by the first-in-first out (FIFO) principle. This important property then enables us to develop an incremental loading method to obtain the ISUE solutions efficiently by solving a sequence of linear programs. Moreover, the proposed method is more scalable that avoids a huge enumeration of paths in large-scale networks as done in path-based methods of the existing literature on this topic. We show via numerical examples the impact of information on both route choices and network performance, and demonstrate the significant improvements in the obtained ISUE solution both in terms of accuracy and computational complexity. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.