Two-player noncooperative games over a freight transportation network

A game between two players acting on the same road transportation network is considered in this paper. The first player aims at minimizing the transportation costs, whereas the second player aims at maximizing her profit (or, in general, her utility) that is proportional to the flow passing through the arcs under her control. We introduce bilevel linear programming formulations for this problem. We derive conditions of existence and properties of the equilibrium points and propose an algorithm finding a local optimal solution. Finally, we present an application of the model to a real system involving trucks travelling through Europe from a Middle Eastern country.