Facility location design under continuous traffic equilibrium

Yanfeng Ouyang, Zhaodong Wang and Hai Yang

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2015, vol. 81, issue P1, 18-33

Abstract: This paper presents two modeling approaches for median-type facility location design under elastic customer demand and traffic equilibrium in a continuous space. The first approach, following the continuum approximation scheme, builds upon the special case of an infinite homogeneous plane where traffic equilibrium can be described by an ordinary differential equation. The solution to this homogeneous case, sometimes in a closed form, is then used to develop approximate solutions to more general cases (e.g., those in a heterogeneous space). This model provides a computationally efficient way to obtain managerial insights and near-optimal solutions, especially for large problem instances. We also develop a more traditional discrete location model in the form of a mixed-integer program, which builds directly upon a nonlinear partial differential equation description of customer traffic equilibrium. We develop a Lagrangian relaxation based solution approach with an embedded finite-element method subroutine, to separate and solve the location decisions as well as the traffic equilibrium. Numerical experiments are conducted to illustrate applicability of the proposed models and to compare performance of the two complementing modeling approaches.

Keywords: Facility location; Traffic equilibrium; Continuum approximation; Mixed-integer program; Lagrangian relaxation; Finite element method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191261515001204
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:81:y:2015:i:p1:p:18-33

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

DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2015.05.018

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 ().