Modeling and solution of lane reservation problem with transportation task merging.

Large-scale sports are often held in large cities with heavy traffic, which makes it difficult to satisfy the transportation requirement. To solve this problem, lane reservation method is often adopted. However, it may make the host city's own transportation even worse. Therefore, it is necessary to study how to make lane reservation. While previous studies mainly focus on minimizing the effect on regular transportation, the present study also discusses the possibility of reducing the number of transporting vehicles. By evaluating in advance, some transport tasks can be merged. Accordingly, the number of transport vehicles is cut down and operation cost is reduced. Based on this, a linear integer programming model is formulated. The model is different from the existing models with transportation network, constraint of task path, constraint and measure of making reservation lane. It is shown that the problem is NP-hard. It can be solved by exact methods if it is not too large. The model is proved to be valid and practical by the results shown by Lingo, a Mathematical programming software as in the example of Guangzhou Asia Games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]