Equitable and Efficient Coordination in Traffic Flow Management

Cynthia Barnhart (), Dimitris Bertsimas (), Constantine Caramanis () and Douglas Fearing ()
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Cynthia Barnhart: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Dimitris Bertsimas: Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Constantine Caramanis: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712
Douglas Fearing: Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Transportation Science, 2012, vol. 46, issue 2, 262-280

Abstract: When air traffic demand is projected to exceed capacity, the Federal Aviation Administration implements traffic flow management (TFM) programs. Independently, these programs maintain a first-scheduled, first-served invariant, which is the accepted standard of fairness within the industry. Coordinating conflicting programs requires a careful balance between equity and efficiency. In our work, we first develop a fairness metric to measure deviation from first-scheduled, first-served in the presence of conflicts. Next, we develop an integer programming formulation that attempts to directly minimize this metric. We further develop an exponential penalty approach and show that its computational performance is far superior and its tradeoff between delay and fairness compares favorably. In our results, we demonstrate the effectiveness of these models using historical and hypothetical scenarios. Additionally, we demonstrate that the exponential penalty approach exhibits exceptional computational performance, implying practical viability. Our results suggest that this approach could lead to system-wide savings on the order of $25 to $50 million per year.

Keywords: traffic flow management; ground holding programs; equitable flight delay (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:46:y:2012:i:2:p:262-280

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