Application of a non-cooperative game theory based traffic assignment

Traffic assignment models can be classified according to the behavioral assumption governing route choice: the User Equilibrium (UE) and System Optimum (SO) traffic assignment. The first model refers to the “user-optimal” model, that is the users´ least cost model, while the latter is based on overall cost minimization. The paradox of benefit between UE and SO makes both of them are not practical. This paper presents a solution technique combining the non-cooperative game theory into the traffic assignment to balance between UE and SO models, which can benefit from both of them and give more feasible traffic assignment. A comparative experiment is conducted among SO, UE and non-cooperative models to validate the model.