Demand forecast, congestion charge and economic benefit of an automated highway network for the paris agglomeration

This article is based on the main results of a pre-doctoral dissertation (DEA) on transport done at the ENPC. The research is about an economic evaluation of an automated highway network in the Paris urban agglomeration in the Ile de France Region. To this end, an automatic highway network incorporated into the road network in Ile de France has been modelled by means of the AEL-Davis software. Moreover, a congestion charging system has been introduced in the modelling. The targeted date of this study is 2020 so projections of a demand for alternative car commuting were made for that period. In addition the phenomena of total generation were taken into account in the evaluation. In fact the stages of total generation distribution and assignment have been recalculated to cater for generated traffic. As a result, a marked improvement in the relation between supply and demand has emerged. Moreover, a slowdown in urban sprawl and an increase in the density of activities in smaller and greater suburban areas have been noted. The economic benefits of such an undertaking would approach 73,000 h saved per evening rush hour. The automatic highway network would lengthen commuting distances by 3.5% while reducing commuting time by 2.6%. Thanks to the highway alone covering 2% of the entire infrastructure it would comprise 4.3% of total commuting distance in only 1% of commuting time. It would moreover increase the average commuting speed by 6.3%.