Application of Auction Algorithm for Shortest Paths to Traffic Assignment

Auction algorithm is a new and simple algorithm for finding shortest paths in a directed graph proposed by Prof. Bertsekas, whose application has been extended to solve a variety of linear network flow problems. In this paper, auction algorithm for shortest paths is introduced and its characteristics are analyzed. The paper compares the auction algorithm with other algorithms widely used such as label-setting algorithm and label-correcting algorithm. The auction algorithm is particularly applicable to parallel computation and to the solution of a large-scale sparse network, which precisely meets the requirements of the traffic assignment. The algorithm is easy to program. Through a variety of measures the basic algorithm can be improved and speeded up and the computation speed can be increased by several times. The auction algorithm can be adopted in various traffic assignment methods. It can be used efficiently in the case of multiple origins and a single destination, and a single origin and multiple destinations. Different origin sets and destination sets are determined in accordance with the requirement of the traffic assignment. It is not required any more to find the shortest paths connecting any node pairs, so a lot of computation can be avoided and the computing time can be reduced by the use of the auction algorithm in the traffic assignment. Auction algorithms can thus be broadly applied in the transportation fields.