Optimization of Renewal-Based Project Scheduling in an Urban Network

In this paper we develop a mathematical decision model and solution method to schedule the sequence of work zones before construction starts. The model is distinguished to quantitatively measure the traffic impact/delays caused by work zones on the whole network links, and specially consider the daytime/nighttime construction strategies comprising of user and agency costs, precedence sequence, etc. For the algorithmic approach, we measure user costs (travel delays) by evaluating combinations of user equilibrium (UE) assignments, and use an approximation approach to approximate the UE travel time at a fine level. Such an approach enables a factual and fair evaluation of travel delays prolonged on all links in the network wide, meanwhile substantially reduce the computational time of UE assignment and thus maintain computational tractability. A small hypothetical numerical example is conducted with fairly good computation performance.