Environmental and equity objectives in traffic assignment modelling

There have been two recent changes in the transportation field that may have an effect on traffic assignment techniques. The first is the increasing concern by the general public on the amount of air and noise pollution generated by transportation activities. The second is the advent of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in which in-vehicle route guidance systems or electronic toll collection technologies allow transportation engineers to directly affect driver routing strategies and hence decrease congestion and pollution on urban networks.; This new combination of the ITS technologies and environmental policies introduces new objectives in traffic assignment modelling. This thesis examines the implications of traffic assignment where the objective of reducing air pollution is achieved by directly or indirectly routing the vehicles by ITS. Furthermore, the thesis examines the potential for routing traffic to achieve a system equitable objective where the traffic is routed on the network to ensure that the pollution levels are the same for all the residents living within the network. The analysis of environmental and equity objectives in traffic assignment modelling is first tested on several small networks and subsequently tested on larger realistic urban networks.