Economic implications of phantom traffic jams: Evidence from traffic experiments

Kathrin Goldmann and Gernot Sieg

No 26, Working Papers from Institute of Transport Economics, University of Muenster

Abstract: Traffic jams occur even without bottlenecks, simply because of interaction of vehicles on the road. From a driver's point of view, the instability of the traffic flow arises stochastically. Because the probability of a traffic jam increases with the number of cars on the road, there is a traffic flow breakdown externality. This paper offers a method to calculate this externality for traffic on a circuit. Ignoring the stochastic nature of traffic flow breakdowns results in congestion charges that are too small.

Keywords: Hypercongestion; congestion costs; circuit; stochastic capacity; external costs; congestion charge; traffic experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L91 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ore, nep-reg, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Transportation Letters

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mut:wpaper:26

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