An Algorithm for the Traffic Assignment Problem

The traffic assignment problem associated with a given transportation network is the process of distributing zone-to-zone trips on links of the network. A number of methods have been proposed to solve this problem, but none have been found to be entirely satisfactory. This paper is concerned with the nonlinear mathematical model of the problem, where the link-traveling costs are increasing functions of the link flows and no explicit capacity constraint is imposed on individual links. An efficient algorithm is developed, using a node-arc formulation of the problem. It is an adaptation of the convex-simplex method that takes advantage of the very special network structure of the traffic assignment problem formulated in this way. Numerical results obtained with a moderate size street network are presented.