Research On Key Theoretic Problems Of Urban Road Congestion Pricing

In recent years, cities and regional economies develop more and more rapidly, along with the steady increasing of population and vehicles. Travel demands exceed travel supplies in urban traffic. The irreconcilable conflict causes traffic congestion inevitably. New means of transportation will bring new traffic, so the increasing of travel demands always preponderates over the increasing of travel supplies. Thus, incremental travel supplies can't solve the congestion problems. Moreover, the external loss from traffic congestion hasn't been compensated. The conflict between travel demands and travel supplies need to be resolved from the angle of traffic demand management.Road congestion pricing is an important measure of traffic demand management. It adjusts and limits the travel demand by pricing mechanism in Economy. It can induce travelers to envisage their travel costs and make rational travel decisions, so as to reduce congestion and compensate the external loss. It also can save the travel time and costs, protect the environment, reduce the traffic accidents, and supply a fund for urban traffic construction and management.Urban road congestion pricing is a complex systems engineering with many theoretical and practical problems. The paper mainly makes researches on some key theoretical problems which congestion pricing has to face up by economic methods. These problems include the reason and influence of congestion pricing, the constitutes and measurement method of congestion external costs, the pricing method of congestion pricing, the traffic influence and equity evaluation of congestion pricing, and the obstacles of implementing congestion pricing in Chinese cities. Based on the previous researches, the paper makes a deep study of the characteristics of urban road resources and the economic principle of congestion pricing. Combined with the characteristics of mixed-public goods and the relationship between traffic and land-use, it analyzes the necessarily of urban road congestion, and expatiates the economic principle and meaning of congestion pricing by Marginal cost theory. Further, the static and dynamic congestion pricing models are summarized and their new applications are introduced.The external costs which urban traffic congestion brings are the reason and base of congestion pricing. It definitudes the meaning of congestion external costs, and makes an intensive study of the qualitative influences and quantitative measurements for those three external costs: extra travel time costs, traffic accidents costs, and environmental pollution costs. Also, a sample case is introduced to prove the feasibility of this method. The external costs are proved to be enormous.Congestion pricing method is the emphasis of the congestion pricing theory. The paper deals with the purpose, objectives and influencing factors of congestion pricing, and works over the characteristics and processes of traditional pricing methods, such as Marginal pricing, Disaggregated model and Bilevel programming model. Based on Game theory, it puts forword a new congestion pricing mothed by the Stackelberg game model and the Principal-Agent game model. A case is given to prove the feasibility.Researches on the influence of congestion pricing are important for evaluating the policy and analyzing the effects. The paper sets up a frame to investigate and classify the the influence to road traffic by congestion pricing. The data of traffic and social influence where congestion pricing has been implemented are analyzed. It is crucial that a prediction method based on Mixed logit is designed to forecast the influence of congestion pricing. It is a concernful reference for the cities where congestion pricing is going to be implemented.Lack of public confidence on equity impacts is an important obstacle to bring congestion pricing into effect. It sets forth the characters of urban road resources and the meaning of equity in urban road resources allocation, and researches on how to measure the equity effects. It uses Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients to narrate the change before and after urban road congestion pricing. Also, sample cases of London and Shanghai are introduced and the practical data are analyzed to demonstrate that urban road congestion pricing can improve the public equity of urban road resources allocation.It analyzes the inscapes of urban congestion pricing scheme and travel characters of Chinese cities, and concludes the non-technical obstacles of implementing congestion pricing in Chinese cities. These obstacles are how to choose pricing objects, how to choose space and time, how to obtain public support and relational traffic support, and how to make income reallocation. The paper advances some measures to solve these problems from congestion pricing system, urban traffic system and social system.The innovations are:1. Based on the analysis of congestion effects, it puts forward a feasible method to measure the external costs of urban road congestion, including extra travel time costs, traffic accidents costs, and environmental pollution costs.2. Based on the traditional pricing methods, Marginal pricing, Disaggregated model and Bilevel programming model, it puts forword a new congestion pricing mothed by the Stackelberg game model and the Principal-Agent game model.3. It sets up a frame to investigate and classify the the influence to road traffic by congestion pricing, and designs a prediction method based on Mixed logit to forecast the influence of congestion pricing.4. It brings forward a new thought to evaluate the congestion pricing equity from urban road resources allocation, and designs the evaluation method by Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients.In this paper, it studies on the external congestion costs to give a reasonable scientific basis of congestion pricing. It improves on congestion pricing methods to perfect the research means of setting down the congestion pricing policy. It brings forward a new evaluation method of the traffic effects and congestion pricing equity to appraise the congestion pricing policy correctly. Also, it advances some measures to solve the non-technical obstacles of implementing congestion pricing in Chinese cities. The paper provides some important references for the theories and practices of urban congestion pricing.