A hybrid routing model for mitigating congestion in networks

Imbalance between fast-growing transport demand and limited network supply has resulted in severe congestion in many transport networks. Increasing network supply or reducing transport demand could mitigate congestion, but these remedies are usually associated with high implementation cost. Combining shortest path (SP) routing and minimum cost (MC) routing, we developed a hybrid routing model to alleviate congestion in networks. This model requires only a small fraction of the total number of agents to use MC routes, and effectively mitigates congestion in networks under homogeneous or heterogeneous transport demand, offering new insights for improving the efficiency of practical transport networks.