CTM-based Propagation of Non-recurrent Congestion and Location of Variable Message Sign

The non-recurrent congestion caused by incident happens frequently in urban traffic network and influences normal operation of traffic system greatly, so that studying on congestion control strategies under propagation of non-recurrent congestion is very important. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the spatio-temporal distribution of traffic flow and location of variable message sign (VMS) under propagation of non-recurrent congestion. In this paper, a bi-level programming model is proposed to formulate this problem. The upper level problem is to minimize the total travel cost in the view of traffic manage agency. Based on the simulation of cell transmission model, the lower level problem is to present trip makers´ route choice behavior under VMS. A genetic algorithm is designed to solve the proposed bi-level optimization model. Computational results show that the optimal location of VMS is able to alleviate the propagation of congestion.