Some Consistency Conditions for Dynamic Traffic Assignment Problems

• DOI: 10.1007/s11067-005-6662-7
• Publication Date: 2005-04-01T18:48:15Z
• Authors: H. M. Zhang; Xiaojian Nie
• Keywords: 0502 economics and business; 05 social sciences

This paper explores some critical issues in modeling network traffic flow for predictive user optimal dynamic traffic assignment. They include the role of FIFO (first-in-first-out) in link, path and network traffic dynamics, minimal set representation of link traffic evolution, and consistency conditions for link models. It is found that (1) link FIFO plays a central role in modeling link, path and network traffic flow evolution, and (2) the dimension of a minimal state set that adequately describes link traffic flow under FIFO is two. Moreover, two sufficient FIFO conditions are provided, and pitfalls in using these conditions to enforce FIFO are pointed out. Finally, ramifications of these findings to DTA modeling are also discussed.