Period-dependent pricing methods of multi-type vehicles for BOT highway projects with pavement rehabilitation effects

Abstract

In the planning stage of a BOT highway project, the future traffic demand plays a pivotal role on designing contract factors. Considering that the traffic demand generally has variations with time, the constant toll during the concession period obviously is not a good choice. And the different toll charges classified by vehicles types definitely affect the traffic composition and maintenance cost. To address this practical issue, this study proposes the mixed integer nonlinear programming models to select the period-dependent toll charges for multi-type vehicles and highway capacity, by considering both the objectives of the government and private firms. Then two solution algorithms are provided to solve our proposed models. Finally, numerical experiments are conducted to assess the applicability and efficiency of our models and algorithms.