Abstract: In order to optimize the operation of the urban multimodal road network ,a bi‐level model is proposed in the study based on analyzing the interaction of the mixed traffic flow .A practical approach was developed to overall design the motor vehicle lanes ,bicycle lanes and pedestrian sidewalks as a whole .The upper model defined road traffic efficiency as an optimization objective .The lower model was an integrated model to forecast travel choices .Three heuristic algo‐rithms with the diagonalization algorithm were used to solve the bi‐level model .The proposed method was applied to the urban road network planning in the City of Huaibei .The proposed algorithms were evaluated on three target values by 30 trial runs each .The results indicate the PSO algorithm was the most efficient .The goodness‐of‐fit of lower model was 0 . 659 ,which was better than the independent traffic network 0 .375 .The network can be optimized to achieve different ob‐jectives .The results also conclude that the proposed approach is practical and feasible to be used in design and planning of multi‐modal road network .