Research on Reversal Lane Application Method of Urban Road Network Based on the Bi-level Programming

When the direction of traffic flow is asymmetric and the road capacity is insufficient, the two-way traffic capacity of the road can adapt to traffic demand dynamically through changing the direction of the lane, which can ease traffic congestion. This paper proposes the implement conditions of variable lanes for road section and verifies that the intersections connected with variable lanes can deal with the increased traffic successfully. Meanwhile, a bi-level programming model was established. The upper-level is the integrated optimization of lane allocating and the lower-level represents a network equilibrium mode, which predicts the drivers' reaction to any given lane allocation. Then, a heuristic solution algorithm is proposed to solve the bi-level programming model. The numerical test results show that the algorithm increases the capacity of the road network significantly and the two-way traffic is more balanced.