Capacity reliability of a road network: An assessment methodology and numerical results

Existing reliability studies of road networks are mainly limited to connectivity and travel time reliability and may not be sufficient for a comprehensive network performance measure. Recently Chen et al. (J. Adv. Transp. 33 (2) (1999) 183-200) introduced capacity reliability as a new network performance index. It is defined as the probability that the network can accommodate a certain traffic demand at a required service level, while accounting for drivers' route choice behavior. The proposed capacity reliability index includes connectivity reliability as a special case and also provides travel time reliability as a side product. This paper extends the capacity reliability analysis by providing a comprehensive methodology, which combines reliability and uncertainty analysis, network equilibrium models, sensitivity analysis of equilibrium network flow and expected performance measure, as well as Monte Carlo methods, to assess the performance of a degradable road network. Numerical results are also provided to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework.