Joint optimization for area traffic control and network flow

A joint optimization problem for solving area traffic control and network flow is investigated. A bilevel programming is used to formulate this joint optimization problem where the network flow following Wardrop's principles can be obtained by solving traffic assignment problems. In this paper, we present a solution approach for jointly optimizing the area traffic control and network flow on the basis of a newly presented algorithm for concurrent flow (Comput. Oper. Res. (2004) in press). We propose three kinds of formulations for this joint optimization problem and present a gradient-based method to effectively solve this problem via a mixture of locally optimal search and global search heuristic where a near global optimum may be found. Numerical comparisons are made for the values of performance index achieved by the joint optimization problem with system optimal flow and those did by equilibrium flow at various sets of initial signal settings. Substantially good results have demonstrated the robustness of the proposed algorithm in solving both system optimal and user equilibrium flow for the joint optimization problem at large-scale networks.