Managing evacuation of multiclass traffic flow: Fleet configuration, lane allocation, lane reversal, and cross elimination

Multiclass traffic dynamic evacuation is a challenging task considering heterogeneous populations and traffic congestion. Based on a novel objective function of minimizing evacuation network clearance time (ENCT), this paper proposes a multiclass traffic dynamic evacuation planning (MTDEP) model, which determines both fleet demand and road supply management strategies, including multiclass vehicles configuration, lane allocation, lane reversal, and crosselimination intersections. In this model, a road network is discretized into a multi -size cell network to load multiclass traffic, and the vehicle -holding problem of the relaxed cell transmission model (CTM) is eliminated by adding the penalty term. Then, we linearize the proposed model into a mixed -integer linear program, and develop a Kriging surrogate -based optimization (KSBO) algorithm. We test our proposed model and algorithms on both a six -link network and the Sioux -Falls network. Numerical results indicate that (a) the evacuation efficiency of using multiclass vehicles is better than using a homogeneous fleet of vehicles in a certain evacuation demand range; (b) while the collaborative management strategies could improve evacuation efficiency, they also take into account the ENCT gap of multiclass vehicles; and (c) the vehicleholding problem does not affect ENCT but increases the total travel time of all evacuees, which should be eliminated.