Dynamic user-optimal departure time/route choice with hard time-windows

This paper is a follow-up study to the dynamic user-optimal departure time/route choice problem, by imposing hard time-windows on origin departure times and on destination arrival times. However, by an appropriate network representation, the dynamic user-optimal departure time/route choice problem with hard time-windows is mathematically equivalent to the dynamic user-optimal route choice problem and can be solved accordingly by the nested diagonalization method. The enhancements of the proposed model are that off-peak and peak phenomena within the analysis period can be properly differentiated and that the influence of earlier departures on latter ones can be naturally presented. A numerical example is provided for demonstration.