Abstract:

Planning and optimizing transportation networks is an essential step in the design and operation of urban transportation systems (private and public transport). These concepts are taught in the Academia (University degrees and Masters), together with laboratory lessons, where students learn to model, design, and plan, transportation networks (intersections, road capacity, traffic demands, bus frequencies, etc.). Transportation researchers, practitioners and private companies have developed professional models and simulator packages to be used in the planning, design, and operations of such systems, but most of them are not open-source, and their trial versions do not offer the necessary tools to meet the Academia requirements.

In this paper, we present Net2plan-UTN, a planning and optimization tool for transportation networks built up as an extension to the Net2Plan planning tool.

Baseline Net2Plan is a free and open-source Java tool devoted to the planning, optimization and evaluation of communication networks (http://www.net2plan.com) developed in the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT). As a teaching material, Net2Plan is being used since 2011 in several University courses in UPCT and other Universities, and is the selected software tool for the practical exercises in the accompanying book [1].

The motivation for the development of the Net2Plan-UTN extension is the expected positive synergy given the strong relationship between the mathematical models used in the planning of both urban transportation networks and communication networks.

Net2plan-UTN permits to model traffic flows in urban transport networks. The user can define elements like the origin-destination matrices, and use built-in or user defined models for estimating the performances of the planned solutions from the road and traffic parameters. A mode choice model can also be developed, together with built-in algorithms for the traffic route assignment, coming from the scientific literature, as well as develop its own ones using the Net2Plan libraries. For this, he/she can benefit from the JOM (Java Optimization Modeler) library [2] for solving mathematical formulations from Java, using a MATLAB-like syntax. Finally, a relevant important feature is the possibility to import and export traffic and transportation network data from the professional software suite VISUM [3].

References:
[1] P. Pavón Mariño, “Optimization of computer networks. Modeling and algorithms. A hands-on approach”, Wiley 2016.
[2] Java Optimization Modeler (JOM). http://www.net2plan.com/jom
[3] PTV Visum tool. http://vision-traffic.ptvgroup.com/en-uk/products/ptv-visum/

Keywords:

urban transportation networks, optimization, educational tool.