Braess' paradox is a counter-intuitive phenomenon which can occur in congesting networks.
It refers to those cases where the introduction of a new link in the network results in the
total travel time on the network increasing.
The dissertation starts by introducing the traffic assignment problem and the concept of
equilibrium in traffic assignment. The concept of equilibrium is based on Wardrop's first
principle that all travellers will attempt to minimize their own travel time regardless of the
effect on others.
A literature review includes details of a number of papers that have been published investigating
theoretical aspects of the paradox. There is also a brief description of Game
Theory and the Nash Equilibrium. It has been shown that the equilibrium assignment is
an example of Nash Equilibrium.
The majority of work that has been published deals with networks where the delay functions
that are used to compute the travel times on the links of the network do not include explicit
representation of the capacity of the links. In this dissertation a network that is similar in
form to the one first presented by Braess was constructed with the difference being that the
well-known BPR function was used in the delay functions. This network was used to show
that a number of findings that had been presented previously using simpler functions also
applied to this network. It was shown that when it occurs, Braess' paradox only occurs
over a range of values at relatively low levels of congestion.
Real-world networks were then investigated and it was found that similar results occurred
to those found in the simpler test networks that are often used in discussions of the paradox.
Two methodologies of eliminating the paradox were investigated and the results are
presented. / Decision Sciences / M.Sc.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/2195 |
| Date | 28 February 2007 |
| Creators | Bloy, Leslie Arthur Keith |
| Contributors | Potgieter, P.H. (Prof.), Wolvaardt, J.S. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (x, 121 leaves) |
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