Bounding the inefficiency of logit-based stochastic user equilibrium

Abstract

Bounding the inefficiency of selfish routing has become an emerging research subject. A central result obtained in the literature is that the inefficiency of deterministic User Equilibrium (UE) is bounded and the bound is independent of network topology. This paper makes a contribution to the literature by bounding the inefficiency of the logit-based Stochastic User Equilibrium (SUE). In a stochastic environment there are two different definitions of system optimization: one is the traditional System Optimum (SO) which minimizes the total actual system travel time, and the other is the Stochastic System Optimum (SSO) which minimizes the total perceived travel time of all users. Thus there are two ways to define the inefficiency of SUE, i.e. to compare SUE with SO in terms of total actual system travel time, or to compare SUE with SSO in terms of total perceived travel time. We establish upper bounds on the inefficiency of SUE in both situations. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.