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DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2025.12

Separator-Based Alternative Paths in Customizable Contraction Hierarchies

Authors: Scott Bacherle, Thomas Bläsius, and Michael Zündorf

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 137, 25th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2025)

Abstract

We propose an algorithm for computing alternatives to the shortest path in a road network, based on the speed-up technique CCH (customizable contraction hierarchy). Computing alternative paths is a well-studied problem, motivated by the fact that route-planning applications benefit from presenting different high-quality options the user can choose from. Another crucial feature of modern routing applications is the inclusion of live traffic, which requires speed-up techniques that allow efficient metric updates. Besides CCH, the other speed-up technique supporting metric updates is CRP (customizable route planning). Of the two, CCH is the more modern solution with the advantages of providing faster queries and being substantially simpler to implement efficiently. However, so far, CCH has been lacking a way of computing alternative paths. While for CRP, the commonly used plateau method for computing alternatives can be applied, this is not so straightforward for CCH. With this paper, we make CCH a viable option for alternative paths, by proposing a new separator-based approach to computing alternative paths that works hand-in-hand with the CCH data structure. With our experiments, we demonstrate that CCH can indeed be used to compute alternative paths efficiently. With this, we provide an alternative to CRP that is simpler and has lower query times.

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Scott Bacherle, Thomas Bläsius, and Michael Zündorf. Separator-Based Alternative Paths in Customizable Contraction Hierarchies. In 25th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2025). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 137, pp. 12:1-12:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{bacherle_et_al:OASIcs.ATMOS.2025.12,
  author =	{Bacherle, Scott and Bl\"{a}sius, Thomas and Z\"{u}ndorf, Michael},
  title =	{{Separator-Based Alternative Paths in Customizable Contraction Hierarchies}},
  booktitle =	{25th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2025)},
  pages =	{12:1--12:16},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-404-8},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{137},
  editor =	{Sauer, Jonas and Schmidt, Marie},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2025.12},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-247685},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2025.12},
  annote =	{Keywords: Alternative routes, realistic road networks, customizable contraction hierarchies, route planning, shortest paths}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2020.9

Customizable Contraction Hierarchies with Turn Costs

Authors: Valentin Buchhold, Dorothea Wagner, Tim Zeitz, and Michael Zündorf

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 85, 20th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2020)

Abstract

We incorporate turn restrictions and turn costs into the route planning algorithm customizable contraction hierarchies (CCH). There are two common ways to represent turn costs and restrictions. The edge-based model expands the network so that road segments become vertices and allowed turns become edges. The compact model keeps intersections as vertices, but associates a turn table with each vertex. Although CCH can be used as is on the edge-based model, the performance of preprocessing and customization is severely affected. While the expanded network is only three times larger, both preprocessing and customization time increase by up to an order of magnitude. In this work, we carefully engineer CCH to exploit different properties of the expanded graph. We reduce the increase in customization time from up to an order of magnitude to a factor of about 3. The increase in preprocessing time is reduced even further. Moreover, we present a CCH variant that works on the compact model, and show that it performs worse than the variant on the edge-based model. Surprisingly, the variant on the edge-based model even uses less space than the one on the compact model, although the compact model was developed to keep the space requirement low.

Cite as

Valentin Buchhold, Dorothea Wagner, Tim Zeitz, and Michael Zündorf. Customizable Contraction Hierarchies with Turn Costs. In 20th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2020). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 85, pp. 9:1-9:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)

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@InProceedings{buchhold_et_al:OASIcs.ATMOS.2020.9,
  author =	{Buchhold, Valentin and Wagner, Dorothea and Zeitz, Tim and Z\"{u}ndorf, Michael},
  title =	{{Customizable Contraction Hierarchies with Turn Costs}},
  booktitle =	{20th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2020)},
  pages =	{9:1--9:15},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-170-2},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{85},
  editor =	{Huisman, Dennis and Zaroliagis, Christos D.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2020.9},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-131453},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2020.9},
  annote =	{Keywords: Turn costs, realistic road networks, customizable contraction hierarchies, route planning, shortest paths}
}

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Separator-Based Alternative Paths in Customizable Contraction Hierarchies

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Customizable Contraction Hierarchies with Turn Costs

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