Analysing the capacity of a transportation network. A general theoretical approach

Estimation of transportation network capacity is important in analysing network performance. In the existing literature, the capacity of a network is defined in conditional terms as a theoretical construct called “reserve capacity”. This may be limited because, when considering local land-use development, the hypothetical uniform increase in O-D flows is not always realistic. This paper, introducing the concept of “capacity function”, proposes a generalized concept of road network capacity which does not require information on either current O-D demand or the corresponding growth trend. Attention focuses on deterministic and stationary situations in which only one path is available for each O-D pair. Some examples regarding simple study cases demonstrate the capacity of this approach to solve problems and, consequently, to contribute to the analysis of network performance.