Accounting for Travel Time Reliability and Trip Purpose in an Agent-Based Dynamic Feedback-Control Toll Pricing Approach: A Case Study on the I-95 Managed Lanes Corridor

摘要

Congestion pricing is an effective management policy to reduce traffic congestion on freeways. This study accounts for the travel time difference and reliability on managed lanes and general purpose lanes in a modified toll rate determination approach recently developed by Cheng and Ishak (4). The original approach is modified by developing an agent-based dynamic feedback control toll pricing strategy that accounts for the trip purpose, travel time reliability, and level of income such that the toll revenue is maximized while maintaining a minimum desired level of service on the managed lanes. An external module is developed to execute the modified strategy in VISSIM and the traffic data generated from VISSIM is exported to a spreadsheet in real-time to calculate the travel time reliability, which in turn used in the route choice process. An agent based modeling was applied to simulate drivers’ learning process and estimation of travel time reliability based on their previous commuting experience. In order to illustrate how the modified strategy works, a numerical example is given. The simulation results confirm that under high traffic demand, drivers with urgent trip purpose have the highest probability of choosing managed lanes, and that the travel time on the managed lanes is more reliable than that on the general purpose lanes. A comparative evaluation is given between the modified strategy, the strategy currently deployed on Interstate 95 express lanes, and the original strategy. Compared to the current strategy, the increase in toll rate is steadier and the toll revenue is significantly higher for the modified strategy, while keeping the speed higher than 45 mph. On the other hand, compared to the original strategy, the modified one offers a more realistic approach that accounts for travel time reliability in route choice, as well as generates higher toll revenue under heavy traffic demand.