A novel urban congestion pricing scheme considering travel cost perception and level of service

摘要

This paper proposes a novel congestion pricing scheme for the metropolitan urban networks where a cumulative prospect theory (CPT) is adopted to quantify the travelers? degree of satisfaction during their trips. Using the concept of the cumulative prospect values (CPV) in CPT, an area-based congestion price (or toll) is designed to reduce the peak-hour travel demand while taking into account the level of service perceived by the travelers.We demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed pricing scheme via an agentbased simulation for the Melbourne network. Results of the proposed CPV-based distance toll is compared with the flat distance-based toll and bi-direction cordon toll in terms of the network performance, behavioral changes, and social welfare improvement. Promisingly, the proposed CPV-based pricing scheme can reduce the long-distance trips (greater than10 km) inside the congested central business district by over 30% while discourage non-commuting trips during peak hours, making more road resources available to commuting trips. Furthermore, it is found that the proposed CPV-based pricing scheme yields positive savings, where the total time savings outweigh the revenues collected, thus proving its high efficiency and desirability among all the comparative pricing schemes.