Selecting and scheduling an optimal subset of road network upgrades

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for selecting and scheduling road network upgrades within a fixed budget to maximize vehicle hours traveled reduction, using a heuristic algorithm to improve computational efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to optimize both selection and timing of road upgrades, reducing computational complexity in traffic benefit analysis.

Findings

The proposed heuristic effectively schedules upgrades to maximize VHT benefits.

The method reduces the number of traffic simulations needed for planning.

Results demonstrate improved planning efficiency and benefit maximization.

Abstract

We consider the problem of choosing a subset of proposed road network upgrades to implement within a fixed budget in order to optimize the benefit in terms of vehicle hours travelled (VHT), and show how to render the solution of this problem more tractable by reducing the number of traffic assignment problems that must be solved. This technique is extended to develop a heuristic algorithm for finding a schedule of road upgrades over a planning period that maximizes the bet present value of the resulting VHT reductions.