Congestion Pricing of Urban Street Segments along with MRT Route—The Case Study of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, already has a congestion problem to handle the ever-growing demand for traffic. The usage of private cars cannot be stopped by charging and the town is not encouraged by quality public transport. It is impossible to enforce congestion prices here in line with traditional cordon pricing systems since the region uses unusual land patterns. However, the current project Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Line 6, which will be built by 2021, provides the prospect of congestion pricing. A price and optimum approach were established for this article. The congestion price is only payable for the segments and is accessible for private cars under this system. Two urban street segments along the MRT route were selected for the study and congestion toll for a private car is estimated for each segment separately. The sum of the toll in monetary terms is determined using certain associated parameters from the discrepancy from the actual Level of Service (LOS) travel time and traffic flow to the desired LOS. The outcome has shown that the price per passenger car is $0.3 - $0.44. The price is flexible, which means it will vary based on traffic volume. The findings for politicians to enforce congestion pricing are viewed as recommendations.

Dynamic traffic congestion pricing and electric vehicle charging management system for the internet of vehicles in smart cities

The integration of the Internet of Vehicles(IoV)in future smart cities could help solve many traffic-related challenges,such as reducing traffic congestion and traffic accidents.Various congestion pricing and electric vehicle charging policies have been introduced in recent years.Nonetheless,the majority of these schemes emphasize penalizing the vehicles that opt to take the congested roads or charge in the crowded charging station and do not reward the vehicles that cooperate with the traffic management system.In this paper,we propose a novel dynamic traffic congestion pricing and electric vehicle charging management system for the internet of vehicles in an urban smart city environment.The proposed system rewards the drivers that opt to take alternative congested-free ways and congested-free charging stations.We propose a token management system that serves as a virtual currency,where the vehicles earn these tokens if they take alternative non-congested ways and charging stations and use the tokens to pay for the charging fees.The proposed system is designed for Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks(VANETs)in the context of a smart city environment without the need to set up any expensive toll collection stations.Through large-scale traffic simulation in different smart city scenarios,it is proved that the system can reduce the traffic congestion and the total charging time at the charging stations.

A modern congestion pricing policy for urban traffic:subsidy plus toll

Congestion pricing is seen as an effective policy to address traffic congestion. In such policies where money, people and authorities are involved, the success generally hinges upon two factors： equity （being fair） and accept- ability （to both people and authorities）. The primary con- cern is the equity, for which ＂tradable credit scheme （TCS）＂ has been introduced and extensively studied in the literature. Nevertheless, due to the com- plexity of the trading schemes, the TCS has yet to find any foot in the real world. To this end, a novel idea of rewarding has substituted the trading component to be known as toll-and-subsidy scheme （TSS）. The idea is to charge the drivers on some roads （toll） while rewarding them to use other alternative--and perhaps underutilized-- roads （subsidy）. The research of the TSS is in its infancy stage. The problem to be tackled in this study is as follows： Given a set of roads constituting a cordon line around the central business district （CBD） or across a screen line, how much toll or subsidy should be assigned to each road？ The problem is first transformed into a capacitated traffic assignment problem. We employ a solution method based on augmenting the travel time of roads up to the level at which the traffic volumes do not exceed some target rates. A real dataset from the city of Winnipeg, Canada, is used as a pilot study. We then discuss policy-related applications of the TSS. It is proved in the literature that one can obtainoptimal TSSs for various objectives and considerations. To this end, the non-negativity of the toll values is relaxed which results in a valid toll set. Nevertheless, the compu- tational time is found to be of highest significance. Our method differs in the fact that the traffic volumes are bounded from the above and it is quite affordable. The main contribution is first to highlight the concept of sub- sidy along with traditional thought of merely toll. Second is to interpret the Lagrangian values of the capacity con- straints as the values of the toll/subsidy.

Optimal Nonlinear Distance Toll for Cordon-Based Congestion Pricing Considering Equity Issue

In order to address the optimal distance toll design problem for cordon-based congestion pricing incorporating the issue of equity,this paper presents a toll user equilibrium( TUE) model based on a transformed network with elastic demand,to evaluate any given toll charge function. A bi-level programming model is developed for determining the optimal toll levels,with the TUE being represented at the lower level.The upper level optimizes the total equity level over the transport network,represented by the Gini coefficient,where a constraint is imposed to the total travel impedance of each OD pair after the levy. A genetic algorithm( GA) is implemented to solve the bi-level model,which is verified by a numerical example.

Flight-Based Congestion Pricing Considering Equilibrium Flights in Airport Airside

Most of the previous works ignore the fact that equilibrium flights in self-profit maximization scenario are totally different from that in joint profit(social welfare)maximization scenario and take price difference(flight fare difference)between the two scenarios as congestion price,which is a passenger-based method.Most of all,the function of congestion pricing is to alleviate congestion by making airlines reduce flights at peak time.Therefore,the equilibrium flights under self-profit maximization should be the same as the ones under joint profit maximization after congestion prices are tolled.Flight-based congestion pricing method is provided in our paper.The analysis suggests no role for congestion pricing when total real flight production of all airlines is less than the equilibrium flights under joint profit maximization scenario.Otherwise,congestion tolls should be levied to all airlines.Furthermore,congestion price can be determined by solving the corresponding equations system.

Will Congestion Pricing Relieve Traffic Jams?

A recent proposal by Qiu Baoxing,Vice Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development,to alleviate Beijing’s traffic jams has triggered heated debate among the public.

Efficient transport pricing-why,what,and when?

Striking a balance between societal benefits and costs of transportation lies at the heart of transport planning and transport systems analysis.Increased transport and urbanization enable the many benefits of modern socieities through specialization of labour,production and lifestyles-but these trends simultaneously increase the drawbacks of transportation,such as carbon emissions,congestion,noise and air quality problems.Technical developments and improved infrastrastructure can help reduce these drawbacks,but they do not solve the fundamental problem that those reaping the benefits of transport-travellers,firms,customers-do not perceive the full social costs of transportation.To balance transport costs and benefits,efficient pricing is necessary.Despite a wealth of theoretical arguments,technical developments and substantial practical experience,efficient transport pricing is still rare.Focusing on the example of urban congestion pricing,this paper summarizes why transport pricing is needed,lessons learnt from practical experience,and what the main obstacles are.The two most important obstacles seem to be political power struggles between different levels of governments,and that even if total social gains vastly exceed total social losses,the losses tend to be more salient;losers tend to be easy to identify,while winners tend to be more dispersed and perhaps only exist in the future.

Alternative Tradable Credit Scheme on General Transportation Network

This paper designs and analyzes an alternative tradable travel credit scheme on general transportation network for managing travelers’route choice behaviors.The scheme is a kind of charging and rewarding mechanism,which provides an attempt to urge travelers to plan their travel routes reasonably so that excessive traffic congestion can be mitigated.Mobility credits are imposed on those travelers who use high congested routes,while rewarded credits are given to those travelers who switch to the low congested routes.A free tradable market is created such that the travelers paying credits can purchase them from those earning them from the rewarding travel route choices.When the total amount of credits earned is equal to the amount of credits consumed,transfer of wealth can only take place among the travelers and hence overcome the inequity problem of congestion pricing.On the general transportation network,the type of tradable credit schemes can be formulated as a mathematical programming with equilibrium constraint（MPEC）model.Based on the model,a credit charging mechanism is obtained under the system optimum and Pareto-improving system optimum conditions.