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

Abstract

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 agent-based 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.