Matheuristics for Traffic Counter Location

Matheuristic algorithms have begun to demonstrate that they can be the state of the art for some optimization problems. This paper puts forth that they can represent a viable option also in an applicative context. The possibility to get a solution quality validation or a model grounded construction may become a significant competitive advantage against alternative approaches. This view is substantiated in this work by an application on the problem of determining the best set of locations for a constrained number of traffic counters, to the end of estimating a traffic origin / destination matrix. We implemented a Lagrangean heuristic and tested it on instances of different size. A real world use case is also reported.