Study On Congestion Pricing For Urban Road Based On Travel Behavior Analysis

ABSTRACT:With the development of technology and the continuous improvement of people’s living standard, the demand for private car ownership is growing rapidly. But urban road construction is relatively slow. The traffic management and control system is imperfect. All these deficiencies lead to a lot of roads (especially bottleneck roads) congested. Travelers are the major creators and victims of urban traffic congestion. The network traffic conditions have an influence in their choice of travel mode, travel time and path of the road. And their choices in turn have a direct impact on the entire road network traffic conditions. To get effectively travel experience, every travels need to face the decision problem. In order to utilize the supply of resources more effectively, we should consider the travelers’choice behavior and related management strategies. This thesis mainly carried out the following work:(1) Study on the urban congestion charging policy by considering two route-choices. Users’information about the road network is different. Some of them choose the path of least resistance in the network and their impedance of the paths equal, which is based on the theory of user equilibrium condition; while the others make route choices based on the shortest distance. Considering these two route choice methods under fixed travel demand, this paper compares the performance of the traffic network system among three toll policies, including without congestion toll policy, the first congestion toll policy and the second congestion toll policy.(2) Study on the urban congestion toll policy by considering road congestion degree. Although congestion toll alone could somehow relieve traffic congestion, but it does not ensure the all sections of the road network capacity have been fully and reasonably rational used. This paper establishes a congestion degree equilibrium model, which is based on road congestion degree (or road saturation degree). The goal is the road congestion degree evenly distributed in the traffic network. In order to achieve the goal, the government should charge travelers. So travelers may change to choose the less crowed roads, and ultimately the road capacity can be fully utilized and reducing idle resources, improving the network utilization.(3) Study on the urban congestion toll and transit subsidies by considering two modes selections. The contradiction between the demand and supply of transport infrastructure is getting more and more serious. From a social point of view, the goal is to minimize the total cost of public transportation and system users. Based on congestion charges for private cars and public transport subsidies, we consider two travel mode choices under the stochastic user equilibrium condition. Congestion pricing not only can be used to adjust the travel costs, but they will subsidize the transit companies without a loss.