Research On Small Town Traffic Management Policy Based On Game Theory

With the development of Chinese urbanization, the traffic demand of small town continues to increase, the contradictions among traffic, population, environment and resources are becoming increasingly prominent. It is necessary to develop scientific and reasonable traffic management policies to alleviate these problems. How to develop a scientific and reasonable traffic management policy? This paper presents that the process of developing and implementing traffic management policies is essentially a game between the traffic managers and travelers(or operator). To develop a scientific and reasonable traffic management policy, it needs to establish an effective and feasible decision model to quantify the possible effects and results of the policy based on qualitative analysis. Taking the truck-restriction policy in a small town for instance, this paper establishes a game model between the traffic manager and freight operators. The main work of this paper are:Firstly, it analyzes the situation and characteristics of passenger traffic and freight traffic in small town. Taking freight traffic as the research object, it discusses freight traffic’s impact on the traffic of small town. This paper comparatively analyzes domestic and international freight traffic management policies, discussing their reference for small town freight traffic management.Secondly, it studies game theory including its emergence and development, elements, categories, Nash equilibrium, detailed introduction of four types of non-cooperative game models, preparing for subsequent model-building in theory.Thirdly, taking the truck-restriction policy in a small town for instance, this paper proposes that the relationship between the traffic manager and freight operators is a leader-follower relationship, establishes a Stackelberg game model between the two in which each one’s decision will affect the other one’s decision and profit. In this model, the traffic manager makes decision and develops a truck-restriction policy firstly, then freight operators adjust their transportation plan correspondingly to minimize its extra transportation cost which is its benefit function. Traffic manager’s goal is to maximize a policy’s comprehensive social benefit. This paper applies the comprehensive evaluation method to quantify and integrate different influence factors for the truck-restriction policy’s social benefit and establish traffic manager’s benefit function.Finally, taking Conghua city for instance, the case study applies the game model to analyze the truck-restriction policies to be implemented, compares different policies’ implementation result and effect and selects the optimal strategy. The case study proves that the model is feasible, effective and practical.From the perspective of game theory, this paper discusses the interest trade-offs and repeated game process between the traffic manager and freight operators in the process of a traffic management policy making and implementation, combined with the comprehensive evaluation method to quantify the effects of policy, providing a new way to study small-town traffic management policy.