ITS Berkeley

Analyzing the Structure of Informal Transit: The Evening Commute Problem

Chavis, Celeste
Daganzo, Carlos F.
2013

Through the use of a profit-maximizing continuum approximation model, this paper systematically analyzes the development and structure of informal transit systems as a function of the network, user, and modal characteristics. This study examines the evening commute problem along a linear corridor where passengers originate uniformly from a central business district and have destinations uniformly distributed along the corridor. Informal transit drivers who are profit-maximizing will be compared against the traditional case of coordinated, government service that aims to maximize the total...

The Evening Commute with Cars and Transit: Duality Results and User Equilibrium for the Combined Morning and Evening Peaks

Gonzales, Eric J.
Daganzo, Carlos F.
2013

This paper extends Vickrey's (1969) commute problem for commuters wishing to pass a bottleneck for both cars and transit that share finite road capacity. In addition to this more general framework considering two modes, the paper focuses on the evening rush, when commuters travel from work to home. Commuters choose which mode to use and when to travel in order to minimize the generalized cost of their own trips, including queueing delay and penalties for deviation from a preferred schedule of arrival and departure to and from work. The user equilibrium for the isolated morning and evening...

System Optimum and Pricing for the Day-long Commute with Distributed Demand, Autos and Transit

Daganzo, Carlos F.
2013

The day-long system optimum (SO) commute for an urban area served by auto and transit is modeled as an auto bottleneck with a capacitated transit bypass. A public agency manages the system’s capacities optimally. Commuters are identical except for the times at which they wish to complete their morning trips and start their evening trips, which are given by an arbitrary joint distribution. They value unpunctuality – their lateness or earliness relative to their wish times – with a common penalty function. They must use the same mode for both trips. Commuters are assigned personalized mode...

Singularities in Kinematic Wave and Variational Theories: Supershocks, Solution Properties and Some Exact Solution Methods

Daganzo, Carlos F.
2014

According to the duality theory of traffic flow any well-posed kinematic wave (KW) and/or variational theory (VT) problem can be solved with the same methods either on the time-space plane or the time vs vehicle number plane. To achieve this symmetry, the model parameters and the boundary data need to be expressed in a form appropriate for each plane. It turns out, however, that when boundary data that are bounded in one plane are transformed for the other, singular points with infinite density (jumps in vehicle number) sometimes arise. These singularities require a new form of weak...

Singularities in Kinematic Wave Theory: Solution Properties, Extended Methods and Duality Revisited

Daganzo, Carlos F.
2014

According to Euler–Lagrange duality principle of kinematic wave (KW) theory any well-posed initial value traffic flow problem can be solved with the same methods either on the time–space (Euler) plane or the time vs vehicle number (Lagrange) plane. To achieve this symmetry the model parameters and the boundary data need to be expressed in a form appropriate for each plane. It turns out, however, that when boundary data that are bounded in one plane are transformed for the other, singular points with infinite density sometimes arise. Duality theory indicates that solutions to these problems...

Dynamic Control of Complex Transit Systems

Argote-Cabanero, Juan
Daganzo, Carlos F.
Lynn, Jacob W.
2015

This paper proposes a dynamic control method to overcome bunching and improve the regularity of fixed-route transit systems. The method uses a combination of dynamic holding and en-route driver guidance to achieve its objectives. It applies to systems with a mix of headway-based and schedule-based lines but it is evaluated for scheduled systems as this is the more challenging application. Improved schedule adherence is the goal. The method’s calculation complexity per piece of advice does not increase with system size. As a result, the method is scalable and can be used with large...

Distance-dependent Congestion Pricing for Downtown Zones

Daganzo, Carlos F.
Lehe, Lewis J.
2015

A growing literature exploits macroscopic theories of traffic to model congestion pricing policies in downtown zones. This study introduces trip length heterogeneity into this analysis and proposes a usage-based, time-varying congestion toll that alleviates congestion while prioritizing shorter trips. Unlike conventional trip-based tolls the scheme is intended to align the fees paid by drivers with the actual congestion damage they do, and to increase the toll’s benefits as a result. The scheme is intended to maximize the number of people that finish their trips close to their desired...

A Reliability-based Optimization Scheme for Maintenance Management in Large-Scale Bridge Networks

Hu, Xiaofei
Daganzo, Carlos F.
Madanat, Samer
2015

Incorporating network configurations in bridge management problems is computationally difficult. Because of the interdependencies among bridges in a network, they have to be analyzed together. Simulation-based numerical optimization techniques adopted in past research are limited to networks of moderate sizes. In this paper, a simple framework is developed to determine optimal maintenance plans for large networks with many bridges. The objective is to minimize disruption, specifically, the extra travel distance caused by potential bridge failures over a planning horizon and under a budget...

Traffic Flow on Signalized Streets

Daganzo, Carlos F.
Lehe, Lewis J.
2016

This paper considers a signalized street of uniform width and blocks of various lengths. Its signals are pretimed in an arbitrary pattern, and traffic on it behaves as per the kinematic-wave/variational theory with a triangular fundamental diagram. It is shown that the long run average flow on the street when the number of cars on the street (i.e. the street’s density) is held constant is given by the solution of a linear program (LP) with a finite number of variables and constraints. This defines a point on the street’s macroscopic fundamental diagram. For the homogeneous special case...

Automated System for Preventing Vehicle Bunching

Saloner, Dylan
Daganzo, Carlos F.
2015

The present invention contemplates a distributed automatic control system for preventing the vehicle bunching. Information of vehicle locations is automatically detected and used to determine the positions and velocities of vehicles along a route. Vehicles pass predetermined points, such as stations, along the route. Information about whether the vehicle skipped the station, arrived at the station, or departed from the station, is automatically calculated based on the position and velocity information. This information is distributed among the vehicles that belong to the same route....