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Joint road toll pricing and capacity development in discrete transport network design problem

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Abstract

The paper demonstrates a method to determine road network improvements that also involve the use of a road toll charge, taking the perspective of the government or authority. A general discrete network design problem with a road toll pricing scheme, to minimize the total travel time under a budget constraint, is proposed. This approach is taken in order to determine the appropriate level of road toll pricing whilst simultaneously addressing the need for capacity. The proposed approach is formulated as a bi-level programming problem. The optimal road capacity improvement and toll level scheme is investigated with respect to the available budget levels and toll revenues.

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Notes

  1. We owe this point to an anonymous referee.

  2. Note that with the definition of first-best toll based on economic theory as the difference between marginal cost and average cost of traffic on a link; this is not integer by definition. Since we restrict the toll to an integer value in this paper, this will be a second best toll by definition. However, we still refer to it as the FBTP here as it has the same effect as a first-best toll.

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Acknowledgments

The work described in this paper was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71361130016, 71422010, 71471167), the National Basic Research Program of China (2012CB725401), and the EU Marie Curie IIF (MOPED, 300674). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the views of the funding sources. Any remaining errors or shortcomings are our own. Any views or conclusions expressed in this paper do not represent those of funding sources.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Rail Traffic Control and Safety, Beijing Jiaotong University, No. 3 of Shangyuan Residence, Haidian District, Beijing, 100044, China

    Meng Xu

  2. School of Economics and Management, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Guangmin Wang

  3. Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, 34-40 University Road, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Susan Grant-Muller

  4. School of Traffic and Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, No. 3 of Shangyuan Residence, Haidian District, Beijing, 100044, China

    Ziyou Gao

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  1. Meng Xu
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Correspondence to Meng Xu.

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Xu, M., Wang, G., Grant-Muller, S. et al. Joint road toll pricing and capacity development in discrete transport network design problem. Transportation 44, 731–752 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-015-9674-2

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