Some observations on stochastic user equilibrium and system optimum of traffic assignment

Joseph N. Prashker and Shlomo Bekhor

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2000, vol. 34, issue 4, 277-291

Abstract: Traffic assignment models can be classified according to the behavioral assumption governing route choice. The deterministic user equilibrium (UE), stochastic user equilibrium (SUE) and system optimum (SO) models have been studied extensively in the literature. The relationship between the UE solution and the SO solution for a given network is well known, as is the relationship between UE and SUE. The question that arises concerns the relationship between SUE and (deterministic) SO. The flow pattern obtained from the SO solution serves as a yardstick for comparison with the flow patterns obtained from the UE and SUE solutions. The investigation examines whether the stochastic equilibrium is "closer" than the deterministic user equilibrium to the system optimum. This paper compares the performance of the different solutions for simple networks. The comparison is made by evaluating the relative difference in total system times for UE and SUE solutions with respect to the SO solution. This paper also presents an extension of previous results to show that the Braess' paradox can occur for certain ranges of demand volumes in the case of stochastic equilibrium and non-linear cost functions.

Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191-2615(99)00025-9
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transb:v:34:y:2000:i:4:p:277-291

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological is currently edited by Fred Mannering

More articles in Transportation Research Part B: Methodological from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().