Vehicle routing problem in dynamic urban traffic network

This paper presents a vehicle routing problem in dynamic urban traffic network with real-time traffic information. Both re-current and non-recurrent congestion are considered in the problem. We develop a method to solve the problem by combining the initial routes arrangement with the real-time route adjustment. The initial route planning is made by solving a time-dependent vehicle routing problem under recurrent congestion conditions. The genetic algorithm is applied. During the plan implementation, a new mechanism updating at the critical node is proposed to adjust the routes with real-time traffic information subject to the unexpected traffic accidents in non-recurrent congestion environment. Through the numerical simulation, the results show that the new route updating mechanism is more effective than others in the literatures, and the advantage by adopting the new mechanism becomes more prominent when the network becomes more dynamic.