Measuring the marginal cost of congestion.

Details

• Creators:
  Burris, Mark ; Patil, Sunil
• Corporate Creators:
  Texas Transportation Institute
• Corporate Contributors:
  Southwest Region University Transportation Center (U.S.)
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Traffic flow
  • Traffic density
  • Traffic volume
  • Traffic models
  • Toll roads
  • Congestion pricing
  • Traffic flow--Texas--Mathematical models
  • Traffic flow--California--Mathematical models
  • Toll roads--Texas--Mathematical models
  • Toll roads--California--Mathematical models
  More +
• Publication/ Report Number:
  SWUTC/08/473700-00088-1
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  Texas
• Corporate Publisher:
  Southwest Region University Transportation Center (U.S.)
• Abstract:
  This study attempted to estimate the effect of additional vehicles joining the traffic stream when it is near ; capacity. The study used data from highways I-35, I-45 in Texas and I-80 in California aggregated at different time ; intervals. Various macroscopic traffic flow models, Catastrophe model and the bottleneck model were studied in ; order to identify models that best represent the speed-flow relation for the traffic data over complete range of flow. ; The Catastrophe model and the bottleneck model did not fit the data well, while three macroscopic models, ; the Modified HCM, Newell-Franklin and Van Aerde model were found to fit the data well. Using congestion ; pricing theory the optimum toll rates were calculated for each of these three models. The optimum toll rates were ; then compared with the toll rates on some of the existing variably priced toll roads the US. The optimum toll rates ; estimated using Modified HCM, Newell-Franklin and Van Aerde model were $0.65, $0.81 and $0.97 per mile ; assuming the value of travel time savings as $20/hr for the near capacity flow. These toll rates were found to be ; lower when compared with the maximum toll rates on three of the existing variable toll facilities which charge ; about $1/mile during the hours of extreme congestion.
  More +
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  DTRS99-G-0006
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/16888/dot_16888_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 984.42 KB]
• Collection(s):
  University Transportation Centers ; US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:5c75219b26b340ff91cc332b0f6a2d97dec97a105960997b9e73038f240fc15c