Modeling the capacity and level of service of urban transportation networks

Consider an urban transportation network. For a given current origin–destination (O–D) demand pattern, we can have a corresponding link flow pattern on the network through an appropriate equilibrium traffic assignment model. Supposing that flow on each link associated with the current O–D demand is below a given upper bound such as link capacity or any other prescribed threshold, we would ask how much additional demand from each trip origin can be accommodated by the network so that flow on each link is still within the given bound when the additional and existing demand is together assigned to the network. This problem can be referred to as the network capacity and level of service problem and is fully investigated in this paper. New formulations are presented and compared with existing techniques in terms of the assumption of O–D demand pattern and travelers’ route and location choice behavior for the capacity and level of service modeling. Numerical examples are provided and potential applications of the models are mentioned.