This monograph provides a comprehensive overview of methods for searching, evaluating, and optimizing highway location and alignments using genetic algorithms (GAs), a powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) technique. It presents a two-level programming structure to deal with the effects of varying highway location on traffic level changes in surrounding road networks within the highway location search and alignment optimization process. In addition, the proposed method evaluates environmental impacts as well as all relevant highway costs associated with its construction, operation, and maintenance. The monograph first covers various search methods, relevant cost functions, constraints, computational efficiency, and solution quality issues arising from optimizing the highway alignment optimization (HAO) problem. It then focuses on applications of a special-purpose GA in the HAO problem where numerous highway alignments are generated and evaluated, and finally the best ones are selected based on costs, traffic impacts, safety, energy, and environmental considerations. A review of other promising optimization methods for the HAO problem is also provided in this monograph.

Table of Contents

Part I: Overview of Highway Location and Alignment Optimization Problem

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Highway Cost and Constraints

Chapter 3: Review of Artificial Intelligence-based Models for Optimizing Highway Location and Alignment Design

Part II: Highway Alignment Optimization with Genetic Algorithms

Chapter 4: Modeling Highway Alignments with GAs

Chapter 5: Highway Alignment Optimization Formulation

Chapter 6: Constraint Handling for Evolutionary Algorithms

Chapter 7: Highway Alignment Optimization Through Feasible Gates

Chapter 8: Prescreening and Repairing in Highway Alignment Optimization

Part Ill: Optimizing Simple Highway Networks: An Extension of Genetic Algorithms-based Highway Alignment Optimization

Chapter 9: Overview of Discrete Network Design Problems

Chapter 10: Bi-level Highway Alignment Optimization within a Small Highway Network

Chapter 11: Bi-level HAO Model Application Example

Part IV: Highway Alignment Optimization Model Applications and Extensions

Chapter 12: HAO Model Application in Maryland Brookeville Bypass Project

Chapter 13: HAO Model Application in US 220 Project in Maryland

Chapter 14: HAO Model Application to Maryland ICC Project

Chapter 15: Related Developments and Extensions

Appendix A: Notation Used in the Monograph

Appendix B: Traffic Inputs to the HAO Model for the ICC Case Study