The global benefit of randomness in individual routing on transportation networks

Abstract

By introducing a simple model based on two-dimensional cellular automata, we reveal the relationship between the routing strategies of individual vehicles and the global behavior of transportation networks. Specifically, we characterize the routing strategies by a single parameter called path-greediness, which corresponds to the tendency for individuals to travel via a shortest path to the destination. Remarkably, when vehicles tend to travel via the shortest path, a congested-flow state emerges between the conventional free-flow and congested states, where traffic flow increases slowly with vehicle density in the presence of congestion. We also found that a high individual tendency to travel via the shortest path does not necessarily shorten the average journey time, as the system may benefit from less greedy routing strategies in congested situations. Finally, we show that adaptive routing strategies outperform controlled strategies in the free-flow state, but not in the congested state, implying that controlled strategies may increase coordination among vehicles and are beneficial for suppressing traffic congestion.

References in corpus (15)

• Statistical Physics of Vehicular Traffic and Some Related Systems
• Statistical physics of human cooperation
• Statistical physics of vaccination
• Saving Human Lives: What Complexity Science and Information Systems can Contribute
• Cellular Automata Models of Road Traffic
• Discrete stochastic models for traffic flow
• Particle hopping models and traffic flow theory
• The Price of Anarchy in Transportation Networks: Efficiency and Optimality Control
• Optimal distance- and time-dependent area-based pricing with the Network Fundamental Diagram
• Microscopic driving theory with oscillatory congested states: model and empirical verification
• A Cellular Automaton Model for Bi-Directionnal Traffic
• From the Physics of Interacting Polymers to Optimizing Routes on the London Underground
• A Scenario Decomposition Algorithm for Strategic Time Window Assignment Vehicle Routing Problems
• The Competition for Shortest Paths on Sparse Graphs
• Two-lane traffic-flow model with an exact steady-state solution

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Bilevel Optimization for Traffic Mitigation in Optimal Transport Networks
• Obscuring digital route choice information prevents delay-induced congestion
• Adaptive strategies for route selection en-route in transportation networks