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Variability of Travel Time, Congestion, and the Cost of Travel

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  • NICOLAS COULOMBEL
  • ANDRÉ DE PALMA

Abstract

The variability of travel time modifies the rush hour traffic and the cost of commuting. The bottleneck model of road congestion with fixed peak-load demand is augmented of an additive random delay. When individuals have ( α-β-Gamma ) preferences, there exists a unique Nash equilibrium. The variability of travel time leads to departure rates that are spread more evenly over the rush hour than when travel times are deterministic. This equilibrium mechanism mitigates both congestion and the cost of unreliability. This implies that "single-traveler models," which treat congestion as an exogenous phenomenon, overestimate the value of reliability for the rush hour. The application with the uniform or with the exponential distribution helps appraise the overestimation.

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  • Nicolas Coulombel & André De Palma, 2014. "Variability of Travel Time, Congestion, and the Cost of Travel," Mathematical Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(4), pages 220-242, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:mpopst:v:21:y:2014:i:4:p:220-242
    DOI: 10.1080/08898480.2013.836420
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    Cited by:

    1. Benezech, Vincent & Coulombel, Nicolas, 2013. "The value of service reliability," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1-15.
    2. Monchambert, Guillaume & de Palma, André, 2014. "Public transport reliability and commuter strategy," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 14-29.
    3. Zhaoqi Zang & Xiangdong Xu & Kai Qu & Ruiya Chen & Anthony Chen, 2022. "Travel time reliability in transportation networks: A review of methodological developments," Papers 2206.12696, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2022.
    4. Ignacio A. Inoa & Nathalie Picard & Andr� de Palma, 2015. "Effect of an Accessibility Measure in a Model for Choice of Residential Location, Workplace, and Type of Employment," Mathematical Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 4-36, March.
    5. Xiao, Yu & Coulombel, Nicolas & Palma, André de, 2017. "The valuation of travel time reliability: does congestion matter?," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 113-141.
    6. Andreas Økland & Nils O. E. Olsson, 2021. "Punctuality development and delay explanation factors on Norwegian railways in the period 2005–2014," Public Transport, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 127-161, March.
    7. Nicolas Coulombel & André de Palma, 2014. "The marginal social cost of travel time variability," Post-Print hal-01100105, HAL.

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