Using decomposition in large-scale highway network design with a quasi-optimization heuristic

• Published in: Transportation research. Part B: methodological Vol. 32; no. 2; pp. 127 - 140
• Main Authors: Solanki, Rajendra S., Gorti, Jyothi K., Southworth, Frank
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01-02-1998; Elsevier
• Series: Transportation Research Part B: Methodological
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Exact sciences and technology; Ground, air and sea transportation, marine construction; Road transportation and traffic; United States; North America; America; Case study; Traffic flow; Main road; Branch and bound method; Road network; Road traffic; Heuristic approach; Optimization; Origin destination model
• ISSN: 0191-2615; 1879-2367
• DOI: 10.1016/S0191-2615(97)00020-9

The highway network design problem deals with the selection of links from a base network to facilitate the flow of vehicles from origins to destinations. A proper selection of links requires a balance between minimization of travel costs from origins to destinations and minimization of costs incurred in building or improving links in the network. Link construction costs are usually minimized as a part of the objective or constrained by budget availability. National or regional highway network design problems require excessive amounts of computing time, if solved to optimality. This paper presents a variation of the Modified Quasi-Optimization (MQO) heuristic developed by
Dionne and Florian (1979). The proposed algorithm solves a large network design problem by decomposing it in a sequence of smaller problems. Additional savings in computation time are achieved by limiting the search in the MQO heuristic to a well-designed set of paths for each OD pair. These paths are generated to suit the network design problem and differ from the K-shortest paths for the OD pairs. The combined use of decomposition and a limited set of paths allows the proposed heuristic to address realistic network design problems. Numerical experience with a problem involving 6563 nodes and 9800 two-ways links is reported.