Solving Continuous Network Design Problem with Generalized Geometric Programming Approach

To satisfy growing travel demand and reduce traffic congestion, the continuous network design problem (CNDP) is often proposed to optimize road network performance by the expansion of road capacity. In the determination of the equilibrium travel flow pattern, equilibrium principles such as deterministic user equilibrium (DUE) and stochastic user equilibrium (SUE) may be applied to describe travelers’ route choice behavior. Because of the different mathematical formulation structures for the CNDP with DUE and SUE principles, most of the existing solution algorithms have been developed to solve the CNDP for either DUE or SUE. In this study, a more general solution method is proposed by applying the generalized geometric programming (GGP) approach to obtain the global optimal solution of the CNDP with both DUE and SUE principles. Specifically, the original CNDP problem is reformulated into a GGP form, and then a successive monomial approximation method is employed to transform the GGP formulation into a standard geometric programming form, which can be cast into an equivalent nonlinear but convex optimization problem whose global optimal solution can be guaranteed and solved by many existing solution algorithms. Numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the validity and efficiency of the solution method.