Evaluating congestion pricing schemes using agent-based passenger and freight microsimulation

The distributional impacts of congestion pricing have been widely discussed in the literature and the evidence on this is mixed. Some studies find that pricing is regressive whereas others suggest that it can be progressive or neutral depending on the specific spatial characteristics of the urban region, existing activity and travel patterns, and the design of the pricing scheme. Moreover, the welfare and distributional impacts of pricing have largely been studied in the context of passenger travel whereas freight has received relatively less attention. In this paper, we examine the impacts of several congestion pricing schemes on both passenger transport and freight in an integrated manner using a large-scale microsimulator (SimMobility) that explicitly simulates the behavioral decisions of the entire population of individuals and business establishments, dynamic multimodal network performance, and their interactions. Through simulations of a prototypical North American city, we find that a distance-based pricing scheme yields larger welfare gains than an area-based scheme, although the gains are a modest fraction of toll revenues (around 30%). In the absence of revenue recycling or redistribution, distance-based and cordon-based schemes are found to be particularly regressive. On average, lower income individuals lose as a result of the scheme, whereas higher income individuals gain. A similar trend is observed in the context of shippers — small establishments having lower shipment values lose on average whereas larger establishments with higher shipment values gain. We perform a detailed spatial analysis of distributional outcomes, and examine the impacts on network performance, activity generation, mode and departure time choices, and logistics operations.