The Price of Anarchy for Instantaneous Dynamic Equilibria

Abstract: We consider flows over time within the deterministic queueing model and study the solution concept of instantaneous dynamic equilibrium (IDE) in which flow particles select at every decision point a currently shortest path. The length of such a path is measured by the physical travel time plus the time spent in queues. Although IDE have been studied since the eighties, the efficiency of the solution concept is not well understood. We study the price of anarchy for this model and show an upper bound of order $\mathcal{O}(U\cdot \tau)$ for single-sink instances, where $U$ denotes the total inflow volume and $\tau$ the sum of edge travel times. We complement this upper bound with a family of quite complex instances proving a lower bound of order $\Omega(U\cdot\log\tau)$.