Study On Urban Road Congestion Charging Based On System Dynamics

After entering the 21 st century, China’s society and economy is developing rapidly, the car ownership in cities is showing a double-digit growth every year, which makes the original urban traffic imbalance between supply and demand even more acute, and makes urban traffic congestion problems more prominent. As one of traffic demand management measures, traffic congestion pricing can intervene urban transportation growth and reduce unnecessary traffic demand through economic means, and ultimately achieve the target for alleviating effectively urban traffic congestion.Although the study about congestion pricing has continued nearly a hundred years, there are a few the real cities that are implementing congestion Charging authentically. Most cities in the world are in the preliminary theoretical research. And meanwhile, because of difficulties in making congestion costs, there is not yet a city in China that begins to implement the policy. The government need to consider various factors in the process. It is more scientific and reasonable to determine the congestion toll in the system theory.First of all, this paper describes the theoretical framework of road congestion pricing, including the definition of traffic congestion, the causes, the criteria and the theories about the dynamic and static.Secondly, this paper determines the system boundary and structure, and analyzes the main influencing factors in the subsystems including urban population, economy, land, environment and traffic, and analyzes the mechanism of the congestion pricing system. Based on the knowledge of System Dynamics, each index variable is determined, and the causal loop diagrams and flow diagrams about the congestion pricing system are constructed.Then, the paper takes Jinzhou as example for demonstrative study. After estimating parameter and testing the validity of the theoretic model, the paper optimizes the model so that it is fully applicable to the practical problems. Through simulating the charging model, it analyzes the impact of congestion pricing policy on the whole system and the development trend of the related variables.Finally, on the basis of foreign successful experience and the optimal allocation of urban transportation system resources, this paper considers the actual traffic situation in Jinzhou, and explores the basic program of congestion charging in the central area, including pricing area, target, charging time and rates, etc. Furthermore, it gives some appropriate countermeasures to the issues that may appear during congestion pricing.