Due to the advantage over signals in expanding network capacity, the strategy of usinguninterrupted-flow (or crossing-elimination) intersections has been viewed as one of the mosteffective means for managing evacuation traffic. However, implementing such a strategy maydemand a large amount of manpower and resources, and often need some evacuees to takeadditional detours. To optimize the selection and distribution of signalized and uninterrupted flowintersections in an evacuation network, this article presents a mathematical model withequilibrium constraints to yield the maximum operational efficiency under the available budget.The proposed model, incorporating a parametric variational inequality (VI) to formulate the userequilibrium (UE) behavior of evacuees in route choice, is capable of providing effective solutionsto the following critical questions that have long challenged transportation professionals forstrategic planning of an emergency or special event: 1) how many intersections should beimplemented with the signals and interrupted flow controls; 2) what would be the optimal spatialdistribution for those intersections in the target network; and 3) how to best plan turningrestriction, channelization, and signal timings at those intersections? In view of the large numberof variables and constraints for the proposed model, this study has developed an efficient heuristicapproach embedded with a diagonalization algorithm to yield the meta-optimal solutions. Anextensive numerical analysis with a sub-network in Washington DC is also performed todemonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed model.
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