Identifying Critical Links in Transportation Network Design Problems for Maximizing Network Accessibility

A significant amount of research has been performed on network accessibility evaluation, but studies on incorporating accessibility maximization into network design problems have been relatively scarce. This study aimed to bridge the gap by proposing an integer programming model that explicitly maximizes the number of accessible opportunities within a given travel time budget. We adopted the Lagrangian relaxation method for decomposing the main problem into three subproblems that can be solved more efficiently using dynamic programming. The proposed method was applied to several case studies, which identified critical links for maximizing network accessibility with limited construction budget, and also illustrated the accuracy and efficiency of the algorithm. This method is promisingly scalable as a solution algorithm for large-scale accessibility-oriented network design problems.