The Economics of Rush-Hour Traffic Dynamics: Beyond the Bottleneck Model

高峰时段交通动态的经济学：超越瓶颈模型

• 批准号: 1629195
• 负责人: Richard Arnott
• 金额: $ 9.94万
• 依托单位: University of California-Riverside
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-08-01 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1629195&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Economics; Rush; Hour; Traffic; Dynamics

Traffic congestion is one of the banes of modern life. Surprisingly, however, until recently very little systematic data had been collected on traffic congestion on urban streets (in contrast to freeways), which has hampered the development of well-informed policies for the alleviation of downtown traffic congestion. The recently collected data have generated an important finding: the performance of the urban street system deteriorates sharply under heavily congested conditions -- more sharply than freeways. This has two important policy implications. First, it is important to implement policies that nip traffic jams in the bud. Second, congestion pricing in downtown areas generates even larger social benefits than previously believed. This research effort develops models of rush-hour traffic congestion on urban streets that account for this finding and applies them to analyze the effects of alternative congestion-relief policies. The research will support one Ph.D. student in applied mathematics, and encourage other such students to apply their technical skills to the study of downtown traffic congestion. The bottleneck model has been the workhorse model for the study of rush-hour traffic dynamics for a quarter of a century. While it has generated many insights, it has a serious flaw -- it assumes that traffic flow remains constant under heavily congested conditions. Recent empirical study of the MFD -- macroscopic fundamental diagram -- in downtown areas has shown, to the contrary, that flow falls sharply under heavily congested conditions. Previous work has developed a model of rush-hour traffic dynamics that accommodates the empirical MFD -- the isotropic model of downtown traffic congestion. Unfortunately the model has proven analytically and numerically intractable. The project aims to develop tractable algorithms to solve the model and also make progress in its analytical solution. These tools will lead to more accurate analysis of policies aimed at alleviating downtown traffic congestion, including not only congestion pricing but also parking and congestion management policies.

交通拥挤是现代生活的巴内斯弊病之一。 然而，令人惊讶的是，直到最近，很少有系统的数据收集了城市街道上的交通拥堵（相对于高速公路），这阻碍了发展的明智的政策，以减轻市中心的交通拥堵。最近收集的数据产生了一个重要的发现：城市街道系统的性能在严重拥挤的条件下急剧恶化-比高速公路更急剧。 这有两个重要的政策含义。 首先，重要的是实施政策，将交通拥堵扼杀在萌芽状态。 其次，市中心拥堵收费产生的社会效益比以前认为的要大。 这项研究工作开发了城市街道高峰时段交通拥堵的模型，以解释这一发现，并应用它们来分析替代拥堵缓解政策的影响。该研究将支持一个博士学位。他鼓励学生学习应用数学，并鼓励其他这样的学生将他们的技术技能应用到市中心交通拥堵的研究中。世纪以来，瓶颈模型一直是研究高峰时段交通动力学的主力模型。虽然它产生了许多见解，但它有一个严重的缺陷-它假设交通流量在严重拥堵的情况下保持不变。 最近对市中心地区MFD（宏观基本图）的实证研究表明，相反，在严重拥挤的情况下，流量福尔斯急剧下降。 以前的工作已经开发了一个模型的高峰时段的交通动力学，可容纳的经验MFD -市中心交通拥堵的各向同性模型。 不幸的是，该模型已被证明在分析和数值上难以处理。 该项目旨在开发易于处理的算法来解决模型，并在其解析解方面取得进展。 这些工具将有助于更准确地分析旨在缓解市中心交通拥堵的政策，不仅包括拥堵定价，还包括停车和拥堵管理政策。