IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2401.16844.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Congestion Pricing for Efficiency and Equity: Theory and Applications to the San Francisco Bay Area

Author

Listed:
  • Chinmay Maheshwari
  • Kshitij Kulkarni
  • Druv Pai
  • Jiarui Yang
  • Manxi Wu
  • Shankar Sastry

Abstract

Congestion pricing, while adopted by many cities to alleviate traffic congestion, raises concerns about widening socioeconomic disparities due to its disproportionate impact on low-income travelers. We address this concern by proposing a new class of congestion pricing schemes that not only minimize total travel time, but also incorporate an equity objective, reducing disparities in the relative change in travel costs across populations with different incomes, following the implementation of tolls. Our analysis builds on a congestion game model with heterogeneous traveler populations. We present four pricing schemes that account for practical considerations, such as the ability to charge differentiated tolls to various traveler populations and the option to toll all or only a subset of edges in the network. We evaluate our pricing schemes in the calibrated freeway network of the San Francisco Bay Area. We demonstrate that the proposed congestion pricing schemes improve both the total travel time and the equity objective compared to the current pricing scheme. Our results further show that pricing schemes charging differentiated prices to traveler populations with varying value-of-time lead to a more equitable distribution of travel costs compared to those that charge a homogeneous price to all.

Suggested Citation

  • Chinmay Maheshwari & Kshitij Kulkarni & Druv Pai & Jiarui Yang & Manxi Wu & Shankar Sastry, 2024. "Congestion Pricing for Efficiency and Equity: Theory and Applications to the San Francisco Bay Area," Papers 2401.16844, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2024.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2401.16844
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.16844
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martine Labbé & Patrice Marcotte & Gilles Savard, 1998. "A Bilevel Model of Taxation and Its Application to Optimal Highway Pricing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(12-Part-1), pages 1608-1622, December.
    2. Marco Percoco, 2015. "Heterogeneity in the reaction of traffic flows to road pricing: a synthetic control approach applied to Milan," Transportation, Springer, vol. 42(6), pages 1063-1079, November.
    3. Dial, Robert B., 2000. "Minimal-revenue congestion pricing Part II: An efficient algorithm for the general case," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 645-665, November.
    4. Smith, M. J., 1979. "The marginal cost taxation of a transportation network," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 237-242, September.
    5. Raymond B. Palmquist & Daniel J. Phaneuf & V. Kerry Smith, 2007. "Measuring the Values for Time," NBER Working Papers 13594, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Yildirim, Mehmet Bayram & Hearn, Donald W., 2005. "A first best toll pricing framework for variable demand traffic assignment problems," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 39(8), pages 659-678, September.
    7. Olaf Jahn & Rolf H. Möhring & Andreas S. Schulz & Nicolás E. Stier-Moses, 2005. "System-Optimal Routing of Traffic Flows with User Constraints in Networks with Congestion," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 53(4), pages 600-616, August.
    8. Lihui Bai & Paul A. Rubin, 2009. "Combinatorial Benders Cuts for the Minimum Tollbooth Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(6), pages 1510-1522, December.
    9. Riccardo Colini-Baldeschi & Roberto Cominetti & Panayotis Mertikopoulos & Marco Scarsini, 2020. "When Is Selfish Routing Bad? The Price of Anarchy in Light and Heavy Traffic," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 411-434, March.
    10. Michael Patriksson & R. Tyrrell Rockafellar, 2002. "A Mathematical Model and Descent Algorithm for Bilevel Traffic Management," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(3), pages 271-291, August.
    11. Small, Kenneth A., 1992. "Using the Revenues from Congestion Pricing," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt32p9m3mm, University of California Transportation Center.
    12. Ferrari, Paolo, 2002. "Road network toll pricing and social welfare," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 471-483, June.
    13. Verhoef, Erik T., 2002. "Second-best congestion pricing in general networks. Heuristic algorithms for finding second-best optimal toll levels and toll points," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 707-729, September.
    14. Lihui Bai & Donald Hearn & Siriphong Lawphongpanich, 2010. "A heuristic method for the minimum toll booth problem," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 533-548, December.
    15. Yang, Hai & Huang, Hai-Jun, 2004. "The multi-class, multi-criteria traffic network equilibrium and systems optimum problem," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 1-15, January.
    16. Luce Brotcorne & Martine Labbé & Patrice Marcotte & Gilles Savard, 2001. "A Bilevel Model for Toll Optimization on a Multicommodity Transportation Network," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(4), pages 345-358, November.
    17. Small, Kenneth A., 2001. "Using the Revenues from Congestion Pricing," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt7170x9b0, University of California Transportation Center.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cipriani, Ernesto & Mannini, Livia & Montemarani, Barbara & Nigro, Marialisa & Petrelli, Marco, 2019. "Congestion pricing policies: Design and assessment for the city of Rome, Italy," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 127-135.
    2. Dung-Ying Lin & Avinash Unnikrishnan & S. Waller, 2011. "A Dual Variable Approximation Based Heuristic for Dynamic Congestion Pricing," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 271-293, June.
    3. Yang, Hai & Zhang, Xiaoning & Meng, Qiang, 2004. "Modeling private highways in networks with entry-exit based toll charges," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 191-213, March.
    4. Patrice Marcotte & Anne Mercier & Gilles Savard & Vedat Verter, 2009. "Toll Policies for Mitigating Hazardous Materials Transport Risk," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(2), pages 228-243, May.
    5. Chi Xie & Xing Wu & Stephen Boyles, 2019. "Traffic equilibrium with a continuously distributed bound on travel weights: the rise of range anxiety and mental account," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 273(1), pages 279-310, February.
    6. Ho, H.W. & Wong, S.C. & Yang, Hai & Loo, Becky P.Y., 2005. "Cordon-based congestion pricing in a continuum traffic equilibrium system," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 39(7-9), pages 813-834.
    7. Ke, Ginger Y. & Zhang, Huiwen & Bookbinder, James H., 2020. "A dual toll policy for maintaining risk equity in hazardous materials transportation with fuzzy incident rate," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    8. Yang Liu & Yu (Marco) Nie, 2017. "A Credit-Based Congestion Management Scheme in General Two-Mode Networks with Multiclass Users," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 681-711, September.
    9. Jonathan Leape, 2006. "The London Congestion Charge," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(4), pages 157-176, Fall.
    10. Welch, Timothy F. & Mishra, Sabyasachee, 2014. "A framework for determining road pricing revenue use and its welfare effects," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 61-70.
    11. Safirova, Elena & Gillingham, Kenneth & Parry, Ian & Nelson, Peter & Harrington, Winston & Mason, David, 2004. "8. Welfare And Distributional Effects Of Road Pricing Schemes For Metropolitan Washington Dc," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 179-206, January.
    12. Liu, Yang & Nie, Yu (Marco), 2011. "Morning commute problem considering route choice, user heterogeneity and alternative system optima," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 619-642.
    13. Lihui Bai & Donald Hearn & Siriphong Lawphongpanich, 2010. "A heuristic method for the minimum toll booth problem," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 533-548, December.
    14. Zhi-Chun Li & Ya-Dong Wang & William Lam & Agachai Sumalee & Keechoo Choi, 2014. "Design of Sustainable Cordon Toll Pricing Schemes in a Monocentric City," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 133-158, June.
    15. Lei Zhang & David Levinson & Shanjiang Zhu, 2007. "Agent-Based Model of Price Competition and Product Differentiation on Congested Networks," Working Papers 200809, University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group.
    16. Button, Kenneth, 2004. "1. The Rationale For Road Pricing: Standard Theory And Latest Advances," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 3-25, January.
    17. Ren-Yong Guo & Hai Yang & Hai-Jun Huang & Zhijia Tan, 2016. "Day-to-Day Flow Dynamics and Congestion Control," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 982-997, August.
    18. Kockelman, Kara M. & Lemp, Jason D., 2011. "Anticipating new-highway impacts: Opportunities for welfare analysis and credit-based congestion pricing," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 45(8), pages 825-838, October.
    19. Yang, Hai & Wang, Xiaolei, 2011. "Managing network mobility with tradable credits," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 580-594, March.
    20. Li, Xun & Rey, David & Dixit, Vinayak V., 2018. "An axiomatic characterization of fairness in transport networks: Application to road pricing and spatial equity," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 142-157.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2401.16844. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.