| Summary |
Fa-Chu Chang, 2008.07
Department of Transportation Technology and Management National Chiao Tung University
Traffic congestion usually occurs on some roads in specific peak periods during long holiday because people have high demand for vacation or homecoming travels. In order to solve this problem, transportation authority often adopts congestion pricing policy to shift travelers from peak to off-peak period. However, most previous research dealt merely with congestion policy for commuters in the peak-hour on week days rather than on holidays.
This study focuses on the bottleneck congestion pricing in a freeway corridor during long holiday. The study formulates an individual travel utility function consisting of travel time, schedule delay, vacation duration, congestion tolls and the experience of driving at different times to measure individual’s choice of departure time. Besides, the study further uses revealed and stated preference survey data collected from drivers on freeway No. 5 in Taiwan on Ching-Ming holiday to analyze travelers’ behavior and calibrate the parameters of the model. Then, total users’ costs in the system are minimized to determine the optimal congestion tolls on different time periods of the holiday.
With the increase in congestion pricing, the results from survey indicate that travelers with longer duration of their vacations are relatively not willing to cancel their trips, while those travelers whose purpose being returning home are more likely to cancel. In addition, the results of the model shows that total users’ cost will be reduced and the average speed during the holiday will be increased in cases transportation authority adopts the optimal congestion pricing. |
