Evaluating the Impacts of Travel Information on Urban Traffic Congestion Propagation and Bottleneck Identification

Identifying network bottlenecks effectively is foundational work for improving network traffic conditions and preventing traffic congestion. In this paper, a congestion propagation model of urban traffic network is proposed based on a route choice model concerning travel information. The proposed models include a traffic assignment model which describes flow propagation on links, and a route choice model which represents link flow influenced by travel information. The proposed model is employed in simulating network traffic congestion propagation and congestion bottleneck identification under different traffic demands in Nguyen-Dupius network. The impact of information on the network performance are determined by comparing the results of simulation with-information to without-information. The simulation results show that a continual increase of traffic demand is an immediate factor in network congestion bottleneck emergence. However, traffic conditions with information provision is better than without information. Meanwhile, information provision can ameliorate the existing traffic conditions depending upon the level of congestion.