Optimal Road Congestion Pricing for Both Traffic Efficiency and Safety under Demand Uncertainty
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 143, Issue 4
Abstract
The impacts of road congestion charges on traffic safety are often overlooked in evaluating the benefits of congestion charging practices and searching for traffic safety strategies. This paper aims to examine how congestion pricing affects both efficiency and automobile safety. The first part of the study proposes and formulates the general traffic accident minimization pricing (TAMP) problem. Considering within-day and day-to-day travel demand fluctuations, a multiobjective bilevel optimization model under stochastic travel demand is developed based on the TAMP problem. This model is employed to determine the optimal toll levels that minimize both the negative externalities of congestion and accidents. Numerical results indicate that the traditional efficiency-oriented congestion pricing scheme, which does not consider impacts to safety, is often implemented in a less beneficial manner with regard to accident reduction.
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Acknowledgments
The research has been supported by the National Science Foundation of China (Project No. 51478085 and 51578111), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (Project No. DUT16RW208 and DUT16LK30), and the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (Project No. 201602187). The authors sincerely thank the two anonymous reviewers for providing useful and insightful comments.
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 143 • Issue 4 • April 2017
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©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 31, 2016
Accepted: Oct 5, 2016
Published online: Jan 28, 2017
Published in print: Apr 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Jun 28, 2017
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