Road Network Design Problem with Considering Centrality Indicators

Development of urban road network is one of the common options to overcome the growth of transportation demand in congested urban networks. The problem of choosing the best combination of projects according to the budget limit is called the Road Network Design Problem (RNDP). In the classical solution of this problem, the travel time index is generally considered as the objective function, while other indices, including topological indices, are also effective in the quality of network service. In this article, the impact of the topological centrality index along with the travel time index on the network design is investigated, and the network design problem is solved by considering the betweenness centrality and closeness centrality indices at different budget levels for the Sioux Falls experimental network. Also, in this article, the betweenness centrality index is evaluated in the conditions of user equilibrium. The results show that minimizing the travel time index does not necessarily improve the centrality index. Therefore, considering the centrality index is effective in answering the problem of network design.