Analysis of Traffic Congestion in Urban Space and the Second-best Pricing Policies

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(1)Development of the spatial model of traffic congestion:The model describes trip making behavior and state of traffic congestion at each location on the urban space. Trip cost depends on traffic congestion along the path of trip, and, traffic congestion is the result of trip making decisions of road users. The model is formulated as a system of differential equations incorporating the above factors.(2)Optimal cordon pricing in a monocentric city:In a monocentric city, all trips are destined to the CBD. We formulate and solve the problem to obtain the optimal combination of cordon location and toll level, and investigate the properties of the solution. Under the optimal cordon pricing, trips from locations inside the cordon are under-priced, those just outside the cordon are over-priced and those in the fringe of the urban area are under-priced. Numerical simulations suggest that the cordon pricing attains an economic welfare Level very close to the first-best optimum.(3)Optimal cordo … More n pricing in a non-monocentric city:We develop a spatial model of traffic congestion in a non-monocentric city, where trips occur between any pair of locations in a city. We evaluate the economic welfare for three schemes no-toll equilibrium, first best optimum, and optimal cordon pricing. Numerical simulations demonstrated that effectiveness of the cordon pricing depends on various factors including spatial structure of the city and other parameters. It is shown that welfare improvement by introducing the cordon pricing, tends to be large, when the urban spatial structure is close to monocentric; density gradient is steeper; trip demand is less elastic; road capacity is larger.(4)Empirical analysis for Osaka Metropolitan Area:We estimate parameters in trip demand function and trip cost function using the data for Osaka metropolitan area. We apply the network simulation model to Osaka Metropolitan Area, which is divided into 36 zones, and has the road network with 241 nodes and 634 link. It is shown that pricing at the single cordon improves the level of social surplus by 21%, and three layers cordon improves by 25%. Less