Author(s)

M.K. Jha & E. Kim

Abstract

Considerable work has been done in optimizing highway alignments between two given endpoints. Previous attempts formulated the problem as a cost minimization problem and considered a number of user and operator costs. It would be desirable to consider the demand in the area served by the highway since demand can significantly influence the selection of a highway alignment. In this paper we formulate the highway optimization problem as a welfare maximization problem using relevant spatial information from a geographic information system (GIS). Genetic algorithms with eight problem-specific operators are used for optimal search. Unlike in traditional genetic algorithms the genes are encoded as real rather than binary numbers. We

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