Activity-based user equilibrium considering aggregated traffic dynamics emulated using the Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram

This paper introduces a simulation-based dynamic model for emulating the network equilibrium conditions considering path- and departure-time choices and incorporating the modelling of activities (e.g. home-work). The primary objective is to investigate the Activity-based User Equilibrium conditions for regional networks using the Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram. We analyse aggregated traffic dynamics under equilibrium conditions on a network representing the city of Innsbruck, Austria. Our study considers various settings and calibrations of the total utility of travelling. The results indicate that incorporating departure time choices and activity modelling significantly alleviates network-wide congestion, surpassing scenarios that only consider path choices for equilibrium conditions. This reduction is more evident when the network exhibits higher levels of congestion. Furthermore, we applied our model to mimic traffic dynamics under equilibrium conditions for 24 h in the entire metropolitan area of Lyon, France, using a simulation scenario calibrated with real data. Our simulation results demonstrate the versatility of the Activity-Based User Equilibrium for applications in a large-scale network, laying the groundwork for potential network-wide applications of congestion pricing or planning strategies, and developing fast simulation tools that incorporate multiple stages of the decision-making process.