Aviation network design in Taiwan

To analyze intercity multimodal transportation choices, an aviation network design model was developed to consider all transportation modes relative to daily airport capacity under different demand conditions in the determination of route availability and frequency. The factors in the model include the travel time of various modes (ground access time included), operating cost of various modes, travel demand, airport capacity, and aircraft-type restrictions for each route. A network flow problem with side constraints was formulated. To solve this problem efficiently, a heuristic algorithm was developed by incorporating Lagrangian relaxation, the shortest-path algorithm, and the subgradient method. The performance of this algorithm was compared with the exact solution for a network of five metropolitan area centers. The results show that the gap between these two is only 1.28%. In addition, a case study of a real network was conducted. This network differed from the exact solution by 0.274%. The study verifies that the flight frequency for each route and the passenger route choices, which were obtained with the heuristic algorithm, are feasible and reasonable. Thus, the model and the heuristic algorithm could be applied to real situations and provide insight for restructuring an aviation network.