This paper discusses uniqueness and efficiency of user equilibrium in transportation networks with heterogeneous commuters. Daganzo (1983, Transportation Science) proved the uniqueness of (stochastic) user equilibrium when commuters have heterogeneous tastes over possible paths but identical disutility functions from time costs. We first show, by example, that his result may not apply in general networks if disutility functions are allowed to differ. However, for "simple" transportation networks, we can show that user equilibrium is always unique and weakly Pareto efficient (cf. the Braess example) for a general class of utility functions. We investigate if this result applies to more general networks. We also show that user equilibrium is unique in a dynamic bottleneck model with a simple network. We discuss an interesting relationship between the following two problems: the existence of user equilibrium in a finite model and the uniqueness of user equilibrium in a continuum model. In the appendix, we also provide a proof of a slightly generalized version of Daganzo's theorem.
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Length: 57 pages Date of creation: 14 Mar 2001 Date of revision:
14 Nov 2002 Publication status: Published, Transportation Science, 38, 315-330, 2004 Handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:494
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Find related papers by JEL classification: C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games R40 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Transportation Systems - - - General R41 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Transportation Systems - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Takatoshi Tabuchi & Dao-Zhi Zeng, 2000.
"Stability of Spatial Equilibrium,"
CIRJE F-Series
CIRJE-F-79, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
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