Study On The Theory Of Road Congestion Pricing

Rapid development of the economy have led to the transportation demand in the city increasing day by day, but at the same time this also initiates many problems such as the more crowded urban road, excessive consumption of the transportation energy sources, more and more traffic accident as well as serious environmental pollution, and so on. Purely increasing transportation supplies can't fundamentally resolve the unbalance contradiction between transportation supply and demand, but induce the new traffic density. Therefore, how to solve city traffic problems such as urban traffic congestion is still need carry on the Transportation Demand Management (TDM). Congestion charge as a TDM strategy has received attention from more and more experts and policy-makers. However, in practice, only several overseas cities have implemented this strategy successfully, although some big cities in our country such as Beijing and Shanghai have carried out massive investigation and study, even have come out with a few related measures, more big cities still are watching and researching. The reason that congestion charge has not been able to implement widely is, the correlative policy and necessary measure of congestion charge is still imperfect, for instance, the congestion pricing model and the technique is not mature.Congestion pricing is to charge the vehicles for pass the specific road section at special time interval, in order to disperse the traffic volume from time and space, reduces the traffic load at rush hour and the crowded road. Meanwhile it will shift the traffic volume to the public traffic system, restrain the increasing private traffic, promote the car used more effectively, advance the implementation of car pool, improve the rate of the road utilizing, alleviate the traffic congestion ultimately. This measure may suppress the production from the source of transportation demand, causes the travelers to reduce their journey or change the time, the way or the route of the journey, then reduce traffic jam.In the theory system of congestion pricing, qualitative and quantitative analysis of exterior cost about city traffic congestion, as well as establishingaccurate pricing model is this TDM policy's foundation. Therefore, the dissertation develops the research based congestion pricing model on exterior cost, and obtains a few results in a certain extent.The paper expatiates on the questions about the city traffic congestion at first. After contrasting all kinds of limits criterion about congestion around domestic and foreign at present, the paper summarizes that all standards about congestion present is according as crowded time and length, vehicle's speed or traffic volume at the crowded road. However, the actual transportation situation in different country, even different cities in the same country has difference, the standard does not suitably unify. Though analyzing the economical attribute of urban road, the paper interprets the reason which congestion produced by the theory of marginal cost: the trippers can not calculate correctly the marginal cost in a journey, thereby they join the crowded troop blindly. According to above analysis, it is necessary to introducing congestion pricing to alleviate crowded. Then, the paper summaries the goal of congestion pricing, and sets forth the ultimate goal and the process goal in detail.On the basis of the questions about the city traffic congestion, the paper introduces and summarizes the theory of congestion pricing which has shaped up. It elaborates the meaning of congestion pricing in the broad sense and narrow sense, and contrasts this policy with the traditional toll for freeway and bridge. Then it classifies the congestion pricing by three different standards. The first standard is place which tolling, congestion pricing can be brought into effect in a region or a single road. The second standard is that the fee which be charged is changeless or alterable at different time. According to this, it can be divided into static congestion pricing and dynamic congestion pricing. The third one is the method in researching, it will be classified the First-best congestion pricing and Second-best congestion pricing. There are two typical theories in the past study. One is First-best congestion pricing which belongs to static congestion pricing, the other one is bottleneck model theory which belongs to dynamic congestionpricing. Both theories will be analyzed qualitatively and deduced quantitatively in the paper.Establishing the model of congestion pricing is the core of the paper. There are four kinds of manifestations of exterior costs aroused by congestion. They are additional travel time, traffic accident, fuel consumption, and environmental pollution. They are analyzed qualitatively one by one in the paper. The paper carries on the quantification to these four exterior costs using the appropriate method separately. When quantifying the exterior cost of extra travel time, it adopts the travel cost law on the basis of local average unit time value. It calculates the cost of additional traffic accident based on probability that the traffic accident occurs when congesting in terms of the cost which producing in the actual accident. The exterior cost of extra fuel consumption is also quantified according to the vehicle consuming actually. When calculating the cost of environmental pollution caused by transportation, it takes the cost which to prevent pollution into account, puts the proportion of this pollution to the total pollution as a foundation. Through the analysis and derivation above, the exterior cost which congestion produces in a city annual is educed. After analyzing the factors that influence congestion pricing, the paper establishes congestion pricing model based on exterior cost.Since the fixed the pricing model has been established, the paper computes the rate using the corresponding data of Beijing in 2004 if Beijing carried the congestion charge this year. And it carries on the brief forecast appraisal to this result.The novelty of the dissertation mostly embodies the aspect that it systematically analyzes exterior costs which traffic congestion produces, and utilizes it to the establishment of congestion pricing model.In the process of researching congestion pricing, the model that the paper establishes may give the certain reference. The study of this dissertation is a kind of attempt in a certain extent, further research about it is necessary.