Congestion Toll Pricing And Transit Service Optimization In A Monocentric City

The last few decades have seen the rapid economic development and urbanization inlarge cities of China, which, however, leads to many concomitant serious problems, suchas heavy traffic congestion, serious environmental issue and extremely high living costsand housing prices. In order to solve these problems, considerable amount of researchhave been done into congestion pricing and transit system design. However, previousrelated studies did not consider the environmental externalities in the design ofcongestion pricing and the effect of governmental subsidy on the reduction of thevehicular emissions. Besides, the effects of urban transportation infrastructure on thehouseholds’ residential relocation and housing prices were not considered in theseprevious studies.In view of all these above, two aspect of research has been done in this thesis.(1) Asocial welfare maximization model is formulated to obtain the optimal cordon tollpricing scheme in a circular monocentric city. The solution properties of this modelwith/without considering traffic congestion and/or environmental effects are alsoexplored and compared. This thesis further extends this model to investigate the effectsof governmental subsidy for the retrofit of old vehicles on the reduction of averagevehicle emissions. The optimal subsidy scheme is also given in terms of social welfare.(2) Based on the theory of urban spatial economics, this thesis analyzes the equilibriumproperties of the mutil-modal urban system and formulates a maximization model fortransit system design in a two-dimensional monocentric city. This model takes intoaccount two transportation modes (e.g. auto and bus) and analytically gives the propertiesof the three related equilibria (e.g. commuters’ mode and route choice equilibrium, thehousehold residential location choice equilibrium and the housing demand-supplyequilibrium). This thesis also gives the solution algorithms for calculating the equilibrium solution of the urban system and analyzes the equilibrium properties. Theeffects of two different regulation regimes (e.g. public and private regulations) on theoptimal bus fare and frequency and urban system equilibrium are also compared. Thisstudy severs a theoretical basis in solving such problems as traffic congestion, emissionpollution and high urban housing price.