User equilibrium of a single-entry traffic corridor with continuous scheduling preference

The flow congestion model provides a realistic form of depicting congestion by considering the spatial dynamic characteristics of traffic flow. For reducing the complication of analysis, previous studies adopted the α − β − γ preference of travel time, arrival early and late penalties. This handling method destroys the continuity of user equilibrium (UE) inflow rate as pointed out by Li and Huang (2017). In this paper, we investigate the single-entry traffic corridor with continuous scheduling preference (CSP) and develop a customized method to find the computational solution of UE flow pattern. Analytical and numerical results show that the introduction of CSP lets inflow rate of early arrivals first increase then decrease. This extends the knowledge given by classical bottleneck model and flow congestion model with α − β − γ preference. Another finding is that, even though the introduction of CSP can smooth inflow rate at departure time of the punctual commuter and make the UE flow pattern more stable, a series of shock waves still exist.