Best Start Time Journeys

The time dependence of parameters in a spatio-temporal network adds to the semantics of common network operations. The result of any analysis in a time dependent network depends on the time at which it is performed. Shortest path from an origin to a destination can vary significantly depending on the start time. This leads to an important and interesting formulation of shortest path computation, “When is the best time to start a journey so that the time spent in the network is minimized?” This chapter describes this formulation in detail and presents algorithms for the computation of ‘best start time’ shortest paths.