Urban Freight Transportation Planning: A Dynamic Stackelberg Game-Theoretic Approach

In this paper we propose a dynamic Stackelberg game-theoretic model for urban freight transportation planning which is able to characterize the interaction between freight and personal transportation in an urban area. The problem is formulated as a bi-level dynamic mathematical program with equilibr...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Zhang, Bo, Yao, Tao, Friesz, Terry L, Liu, Hongcheng
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 20.11.2012
Subjects
Algorithms
Freight traffic
Freight transportation
Game theory
Intermodal transportation
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical models
Traffic flow
Traffic planning
Transportation planning
Trucks
Urban areas
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:In this paper we propose a dynamic Stackelberg game-theoretic model for urban freight transportation planning which is able to characterize the interaction between freight and personal transportation in an urban area. The problem is formulated as a bi-level dynamic mathematical program with equilibrium constraints (MPEC) which belongs to a class of computationally challenging problems. The lower level is dynamic user equilibrium (DUE) with inhomogeneous traffic that characterizes traffic system optimum (SO) freight transportation planning problem which aims at minimizing the total cost to a truck company. A mathematical program with complementarity constraints (MPCC) reformulation is derived and a projected gradient algorithm is designed to solve this computationally challenging problem. Numerical experiments are conducted to show that when planning freight transportation the background traffic is nonnegligible, even though the amount of trucks compared to other vehicles traveling on the same network is relatively small. What's more, in our proposed bi-level model for urban freight transportation planning, we find a dynamic case of a Braess-like Paradox which can provide managerial insights to a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) in increasing social welfare by restricting freight movement.
ISSN:2331-8422