A strategy on rural pricing for rural freeways.

摘要

The main objective of rural roadway pricing is revenue generation, rather than elimination of congestion externalities. This thesis presents a model which provides optimum tolls accounting for pavement deterioration and economic impacts. Setting tolls changes traffic movements which affects pavement deterioration rates, the benefits of maintenance, and local economies. This model also allows differential pricing for different types of vehicle. Due to the discontinuity of the formulation, simulated annealing is used to find tolls on selected roadway arcs. The numerical results, applied to a network representing the state of Wyoming, verify its effectiveness and limitations by showing sensitivity analysis for different parameters.