Urban Traffic Congestion Pricing

With the rapid development of the urban economy, the number of motor vehicles is becoming lager and lager, which results in the increasingly serious traffic congestion among large and medium cities. The essential reason of urban congestion is the severe unbalance of urban road resources. The traditional method to ease the traffic pressure is to build more roads, however, this method has been proved invalid because it can produce more and new traffic demand, which will aggravate the traffic congestion in the long run. Therefore, it’s necessary to control traffic demand by administrative or economic method, which can ease the traffic congestion through reducing the traffic demand.Traffic congestion fee is a policy that affect travelers’travel choice by imposing them additional travel cost. At present, many cities abroad such as Singapore, London, Stockholm have successfully implemented the policy, achieving great results on controlling traffic congestion,reducing air pollution and improving energy efficiency and so on. In view of the increasingly serious traffic jams, some cities in our country are also brewing the traffic congestion pricing policy. And the key to the policy implementation lies in the determination of the urban traffic congestion pricing standard, which is also what this article will study on.The research idea of this paper is:First of all, summarize the research literatures related to the topic; Secondly, put forward the ecological engineering mathematical model for the traffic congestion fee based on the binary logit model of travel mode choice; Thirdly, this paper takes Dalian as an example to solve the model mentioned; Finally, put forward this paper’s conclusion and the corresponding policy recommendations. Specific research framework is below:The first chapter is introduction. This part introduces the background and significance, research content, research methods, framework, innovation and insufficiency of this paper.The second chapter is literature review. This chapter contains four parts:In the first part, we discuss the theory base, overview and assessment of the optimal congestion pricing model; In the second part, we introduce the bottleneck congestion pricing model, and then evaluate it combining with its development; In the third part, we introduce the theory base and development of the second-best congestion pricing model; In the last part, we summarize the main shortages of those existing models, and then lead to the discussion to the third chapter.The third chapter is the theory study and deduction of the urban congestion pricing model. We firstly introduce the eco-engineering mathematical model for the urban congestion traffic fee. Then we establish the traffic demand function based on the binary logit model about travelers’transportation choice. Finally we combine the travel time, congestion fee with the traffic demand to establish the equation set to solve the optimal urban congestion fee.The fourth chapter is the developing research of this paper’s theory research. We set the parameters in the theory model based on data of Dalian, then we solve the optimal congestion fee applied to Dalian. In the end, this paper put forward some suggestion on the congestion pricing plan of Dalian.The fifth chapter contains this paper’s conclusions and policy suggestions. Since the previous traffic congestion pricing models don’t have realistic feasibility, it’s hard for many cities to carry out the traffic congestion fee policy. This paper’s model can not only simulate the reality well, but also be operable. However, as a new policy, the congestion fee will inevitably encounter a series of problems. This paper puts forward several suggestions to solve these problems, including completing public transport facilities; developing auxiliary bus; publicizing traffic congestion pricing policy and establishing strict supervision system of using the funds, etc.The innovation points of this paper are as following:First, establishing a traveler transportation choice binary logit model, which shows that the probability of travelers to choose private cars is related with the travel expenses, thus establishing the relation between travel demand and traffic congestion fee. Second, make use of the travel demand which is a function of travel time and congestion fee, combine with the function which shows the relation between travel time and congestion fee, set up simultaneous equations to solve the optimal urban traffic congestion fee. The method is proved to be effective.