How does the complexity of a road network affect optimal facility locations?

The road network is a necessary component in transportation. It facilitiesspatial movements of people and goods, and it also influences the optimal locations of facilities that usually serve as destinations of the movements. To fulfill the transportation needs and to adapt to the facility development, the road network is often organized hierarchically and asymmetrically with various road levels and spatial structures. The complexity of the road network increases along with the increase of road levels and spatial structures. However, location models locate facilities on a given road network, usually the most complex one, and the influence from the complexity of road network in finding optimal locations is not well-studied. This paper aims to investigate how the complexity of a road network affects the optimal facility locations by applying the widely-applied p-median model. The main result indicates that an increase in road network complexity, up to a certain level, can obviously improve the solution, and the complexity beyond that level does not always lead to better solutions. Furthermore, the result is not sensitive to the choice of algorithms. In a specific case study, a detailed sensitivity analysis of algorithm and facility number further provides insight into computation complexity and location problems from intra-urban to inter-urban.New updated version of paper.