Distance-dependent Congestion Pricing for Downtown Zones

Carlos F Daganzo and Lewis J Lehe

Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley

Abstract: A growing literature exploits macroscopic theories of traffic to model congestion pricing policies in downtown zones. This study introduces trip length heterogeneity into this analysis and proposes a usage-based, time-varying congestion toll that alleviates congestion while prioritizing shorter trips. Unlike conventional trip-based tolls the scheme is intended to align the fees paid by drivers with the actual congestion damage they do, and to increase the toll’s benefits as a result. The scheme is intended to maximize the number of people that finish their trips close to their desired times. The usage-based toll is compared to a traditional, trip-based toll which neglects trip length. It is found that, like trip-based tolls, properly designed usage-based tolls alleviate congestion. But they reduce schedule delay more than trip-based tolls and do so with much smaller user fees. As a result usage-based tolls always leave those who pay with a large welfare gain. This may increase the tolls’ political acceptability.

Keywords: Engineering; congestion pricing; trip length; tolls; policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tre and nep-ure
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