Revenue management in the parking industry: a multiple garage intelligent reservation model

This paper explores how advanced reservations, coupled with dynamic pricing (based on booking limits) can be used to maximize parking revenue. An integer programing formulation that maximizes parking revenue over a system of garages is presented. Furthermore, an intelligent parking reservation model is developed that uses an artificial neural network procedure for online reservation decision-making. Finally, the paper provides some strategic and managerial implications of multi-garage revenue management systems, and discusses techniques for identifying and implementing micro-market segmentation in the parking industry.     

Auction-based tolling systems in a connected and automated vehicles environment: Public opinion and implications for toll revenue and capacity utilization

Autonomous and connected vehicles are expected to enable new tolling mechanisms, such as auction-based tolls, for allocating the limited roadway capacity. This research examines the public perception of futuristic auction-based tolling systems, with a focus on the public acceptance of such systems over current tolling practices on highways (e.g., dynamic and fixed tolling methodologies). Through a stated-preference survey, responses from 159 road-users residing in Virginia are elicited to understand route choice behavior under a descending price auction implemented on a hypothetical two-route network. Analysis of the survey data shows that there is no outright rejection of the presented auction-based tolling among those who are familiar with the current tolling methods. While males strongly support the new method, no clear pattern emerges among other demographic variables such as income and education level, and age. While high income respondents and regular commuters are more likely to pay higher tolls, no statistical significance between different genders, age groups, household sizes, and education levels is found. Based on the modeling results and the hypothetical road network, it is found that descending price tolling method yields higher average toll rates, and generates at least 70% more revenue when travel time saving is 30 min, and improves capacity utilization of the toll road significantly compared to fixed tolls.     

Efficiency of a highway use reservation system for morning commute

This paper examines the design and efficiency of a highway use reservation system where commuters need reservations to access a highway facility at specific times. We show that, by accommodating reservation requests to the level that the highway capacity allows, traffic congestion can be relieved. Generally, a more differentiated design of the reservation system yields a higher reduction of travel cost and thus achieves a higher efficiency. The efficiency bound of the system is established. We also show that braking or tactical waiting behaviors of drivers would cause a loss of efficiency, which thus need be proactively accommodated. Given that user heterogeneity cause further loss of efficiency, we explore how two specific types of user heterogeneity affect the system efficiency. Auction-based reservation is then proposed to mitigate the efficiency loss.     

Do motor-vehicle users in the US pay their way?

Governments in the US spend over a hundred billion dollars per year to build and maintain roads and provide a variety of services for motor-vehicle users. To pay for these infrastructure and services governments collect revenue from a variety of taxes and fees. The basic objective of this paper is to compare these government expenditures with the corresponding user tax and fee payments in the US. At the outset I argue that the such comparisons tell us something about the equity but not necessarily the economic efficiency of highway financing. I then present four different ways one might tally up government expenditures and user payments, depending on the extent to which one wishes to count “indirect” expenditures (e.g., on prosecuting car thieves) and non-targeted general-tax payments (e.g., severance taxes on oil). I make a comprehensive analysis of all possible expenditures and payments, and then compare them according to three of the four ways of counting expenditures and payments. The analysis indicates that in the US current tax and fee payments to the government by motor-vehicle users fall short of government expenditures related to motor-vehicle use by approximately 20–70 cents per gallon of all motor fuel. (Note that in this accounting we include only government expenditures; we do not include any “external” costs of motor-vehicle use.) The extent to which one counts indirect government expenditures related to motor-vehicle use is a key factor in the comparison.     

Transaction costs and tradable mobility credits

Artificial markets for mobility credits have been proposed as an alternative to conventional congestion pricing schemes. This paper examines the effects of transaction costs on two types of markets: an auction market and a negotiated market. In an auction market, users purchase all of the needed mobility credits through a competitive bidding process. In a negotiated market, the users initially receive certain amount of mobility credits from the government and trade with each other through negotiation to fulfill their needs. We assume that a brokerage service is built in both markets to facilitate transactions and accordingly, the users have to pay a commission fee proportional to the value of trade. The users are also given the option to purchase credits from the government if for some reasons they cannot use or wish to avoid the markets. Our analyses suggest that the auction market can achieve the desired equilibrium allocation of mobility credits as long as the government sets its price properly and the unit transaction cost is lower than the price that the market would reach in absence of transaction costs. However, in the negotiated market, transaction costs could divert the system from the desired equilibrium regardless of their magnitude. More importantly, the initial allocation of mobility credits may affect the final equilibrium even when marginal transaction costs are constant.     

Donor states and donee states: investigating geographic redistribution of the US federal-aid highway program 1974–2008

In 2009, the US government spent more than $42 billion on the federal-aid highway program. Most of this money was raised from motor vehicle taxes, whose proceeds are deposited in the highway trust fund. Federal motor vehicle user taxes flow into the fund and aid expenditures flow out from it to build and maintain highways and other transportation infrastructure. With so much money at stake it should be no surprise that expenditure decisions are the subject of intense political debate. Chief among these debates is the conflict between donor states, whose residents pay more in highway user taxes than the state receives in federal highway aid and donee states, whose residents pay less in highway user taxes than the state receives in highway aid. While this geographic redistribution has been masked recently by infusions of general fund revenue into the trust fund, the debate nevertheless continues. This paper attempts to understand why some states are donors and others are donees by simultaneously testing four hypotheses about the geographic redistribution of federal highway dollars that relate to a state’s highway need, economic condition, level of urbanization, and representation on the key Congressional oversight committees. The analyses show that redistribution does not favor states with larger highway systems, more highway use, or lower median incomes, all of which are different indicators of need. Instead, states that are less urban and better represented on the four key Congressional committees generally benefit from redistribution. These findings indicate that the user tax revenues are not used in places where they are most needed. Thus they provide little empirical support for any compelling policy argument for continued geographic redistribution of federal highway user tax dollars.     

Agent based model for dynamic ridesharing

Dynamic ridesharing involves a service provider that matches potential drivers and passengers with similar itineraries allowing them to travel together and share the costs. Centralized (binary integer programming) and decentralized (dynamic auction-based multi-agent) optimization algorithms are formulated to match passengers and drivers. Numerical experiments on the decentralized approach provides near optimal solutions for single-driver, single-passenger cases with lower computational burden. The decentralized approach is then extended to accommodate both multi-passenger and multi-driver matches. The results indicate higher user cost savings and vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) savings when allowing multi-passenger rides. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to test the impact of the service provider commission rate on revenue and system reliability. While short term revenue can be maximized at a commission rate of roughly 50% of each trip’s cost, the resulting drop in system reliability would be expected to reduce patronage and revenues in the longer term.     

Taxation and revenue policies for future federal highway programs

In a word of tight budgets and growing investment needs, the question of how highways of national significance will be financed in the future has never been more important. This paper provides a background for addressing this question by tracing the development of current Federal highway tax and revenue policies, describing recent trends in Federal highway finance, and discussing several limitations on the productivity of existing Federal highway revenue sources. Principles of taxation that can be used to guide the search for future revenue sources are then described, current Federal highway user fees are reviewed within the context of those principles, and the additional revenue potential of the existing highway tax structure is discussed. Potential alternative sources of highway revenue are then discussed and selected alternative funding mechanisms are described.     

Serial private infrastructures

This paper investigates private supply of two congestible infrastructures that are serial, where the consumer has to use both in order to consume. Four market structures are analysed: a monopoly and 3 duopolies that differ in how firms interact. It is well known that private supply leads too high usage fees, and that a serial duopoly leads to even higher fees than a monopoly, as firms are monopolists on their sections. But, as this paper finds, a duopoly can also lead to a different capacity rule than the first-best one, and this distortion differs from with two parallel facilities. Finally, four auction formats for the right to build and operate facilities are investigated. With a bid auction, the competition is on how much to pay the government. This auction leads to the same outcome as no auction. An auction on the facility’s capacity leads to an even lower welfare than no auction, as firms set overly large high capacities. Conversely, an auction on the generalised price or number of users leads to the first-best outcome, which they do when the facilities go to one or two winners and both with serial as with parallel facilities.     

Trading mechanisms for bottleneck permits with multiple purchase opportunities

This paper extends the theory of tradable bottleneck permits system to cases with multiple period markets and designs its implementation mechanism. The multiple period markets can achieve more efficient resource allocation than a single period market when users’ valuations of tradable permits change over time. To implement the multiple period trading markets, we propose an evolutionary mechanism that combines a dynamic auction with a capacity control rule that adjusts a number of permits issued for each market. Then, we prove that the proposed mechanism has the following desirable properties: (i) the dynamic auction is strategy-proof within each period and guarantees that the market choice of each user is optimal under a perfect information assumption of users and (ii) the mechanism maximizes the social surplus in a finite number of iterations. Finally, we show that the proposed mechanism may work well even for an incomplete information case.     

GIS-based highway design review system to improve constructability of design

This paper presents a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a tool which can help highway engineers review a completed highway design to improve its constructability. The GIS can link different data sets together using geographical location as the common key between the data sets to perform various spatial operations. In this paper, the GIS is used to integrate various highway design data using a common milepost referencing system. The GIS allows the integration of the highway design information by establishing common spatial relationships between various highway design features and their geographical locations. The GIS can provide a comprehensive platform upon which all aspects of the highway project review process can be built. This paper also addresses the interface of GIS with the existing highway project data bases and computer-aided design files. The proposed GIS-based highway design review system can improve the constructability of the highway design at an early design review stage.     

Using the revenues from congestion pricing

The economic theory behind congestion pricing relies on using the revenues to help compensate highway users. But can practical methods of using revenues come close to achieving this compensation, and still have salient appeal to important political groups? This paper investigates the possibilities for designing a package of revenue uses that can achieve these twin goals. The suggested approach returns two-thirds of the revenues to travelers through travel allowances and tax reductions, and uses the rest to improve transportation throughout the area, including affected business centers. By replacing regressive sales and fuel taxes, this approach offsets the tendency of the prices alone to have a regressive distributional impact. By lowering taxes, funding new highways, improving transit, and upgrading business centers, the package provides inducements for support from several key interest groups. The potential amounts of money involved are discussed using nationwide data, and in more detail using a case study of ubiquitous facility pricing throughout the Los Angeles region. Illustrative calculations of the effects on various individuals confirm that such a package can create net benefits for a wide spectrum of people and interest groups.     

Highway pricing and capacity choice in a road network under a build–operate–transfer scheme

It is often argued lately that the private sector should be allowed to build and operate roads in a transportation network at its own expense, in return it should receive the revenue from road toll charge within some years, and then these roads will be transferred to the government. This type of build–operate–transfer (B–O–T) projects is currently fashionable worldwide, especially for developing countries short of funds for road construction. One of the important issues concerning a highway B–O–T project is the selection of the capacity and toll charge of the new road and the evaluation of the relevant benefits to the private investor, the road users and the whole society under various market conditions. This paper deals with the selection and evaluation of a highway project under such a B–O–T scheme. For a given road network with elastic demand, mathematical models are proposed to investigate the feasibility of a candidate project and ascertain the optimal capacity and level of toll charge of the new highway. The response of road users to the new B–O–T project is explicitly considered. The characteristic of the problem is illustrated graphically with a numerical example.     

Incentivized vehicle relocation in vehicle sharing systems

The asymmetric demand-offer problem represents a major challenge for one-way vehicle sharing systems (VSS) affecting their economic viability as it necessitates the engagement of considerable human (and financial) resources in relocating vehicles to satisfy customer demand. In this paper, we propose a novel approach which involves user-based vehicle relocations to address supply-and-demand mismatches; in our approach, VSS users are offered price incentives so as to accept picking up their vehicle from an oversupplied station and/or to drop it off to an under-supplied station. The system incentivizes users based on the priorities of vehicle relocations among stations, taking into account the fluctuating demand for vehicles and parking places at different stations over time. A graph-theoretic approach is employed for modeling the problem of allocating vehicles to users in a way that maximizes the profit of the system taking into account the budget the VSS can afford to spend for rewarding users, as well as the users’ strategic behavior. We present two different schemes for incentivizing users to act in favour of the system. Both schemes consider budget constraints and are truthful and budget-feasible. We have extensively evaluated our approach through simulations which demonstrated significant gain with respect to the number of completed trips and system revenue. We have also validated our approach through pilot trials conducted in a free-floating e-motorbike sharing system in the framework of an EU-funded research project.     

垦利南互通立交的施工方案与远期预留研究

阐述了垦利南互通立交的项目背景与工程实施难点,在考虑高速公路安全通车的情况下组织施工时高速公路的运营方案,结合长远发展,进行了远期预留的互通立交设计。     

The effect of slow zones on ridership: An analysis of the Chicago Transit Authority “El” Blue Line

Transit agencies frequently upgrade rail tracks to bring the system to a state of good repair (SGR) and to improve the speed and reliability of urban rail transit service. For safety during construction, agencies establish slow zones in which trains must reduce speed. Slow zones create delays and schedule disruptions that result in customer dissatisfaction and discontinued use of transit, either temporarily or permanently. While transit agencies are understandably concerned about the possible negative effects of slow zones, empirical research has not specifically examined the relationship between slow zones and ridership. This paper partially fills that gap. Using data collected from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Customer Experience Survey, CTA Slow Zone Maps, and, the Automatic Fare Collection System (AFC), it examines whether recurring service delays due to slow zones affect transit rider behavior and if the transit loyalty programs, such as smart card systems, increase or decrease rider defections. Findings suggest that slow zones increase headway deviation which reduces ridership. Smart card customers are more sensitive to slow zones as they are more likely to stop using transit as a result of delay. The findings of this paper have two major policy implications for transit agencies: (1) loyalty card users, often the most reliable source of revenue, are most at risk for defection during construction and (2) it is critical to minimize construction disruptions and delays in the long run by maintaining state of good repair. The results of this paper can likely be used as the basis for supporting immediate funding requests to bring the system to an acceptable state of good repair as well as stimulating ideas about funding reform for transit.     

Time-dependent area-based pricing for multimodal systems with heterogeneous users in an agent-based environment

In this paper, we investigate an area-based pricing scheme for congested multimodal urban networks with the consideration of user heterogeneity. We propose a time-dependent pricing scheme where the tolls are iteratively adjusted through a Proportional–Integral type feedback controller, based on the level of vehicular traffic congestion and traveler’s behavioral adaptation to the cost of pricing. The level of congestion is described at the network level by a Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram, which has been recently applied to develop network-level traffic management strategies. Within this dynamic congestion pricing scheme, we differentiate two groups of users with respect to their value-of-time (which related to income levels). We then integrate incentives, such as improving public transport services or return part of the toll to some users, to motivate mode shift and increase the efficiency of pricing and to attain equitable savings for all users. A case study of a medium size network is carried out using an agent-based simulator. The developed pricing scheme demonstrates high efficiency in congestion reduction. Comparing to pricing schemes that utilize similar control mechanisms in literature which do not treat the adaptivity of users, the proposed pricing scheme shows higher flexibility in toll adjustment and a smooth behavioral stabilization in long-term operation. Significant differences in behavioral responses are found between the two user groups, highlighting the importance of equity treatment in the design of congestion pricing schemes. By integrating incentive programs for public transport using the collected toll revenue, more efficient pricing strategies can be developed where savings in travel time outweigh the cost of pricing, achieving substantial welfare gain.     

Evaluation of travel demand strategies: a microscopic traffic simulation approach

This research investigates the design and impact of a new travel demand management approach, namely the Downtown Space Reservation System (DSRS), using a microscopic traffic simulation approach executed in VISSIM. The DSRS is part of a Travel Demand Management strategy that is designed to mitigate traffic congestion in a downtown urban setting. The simulation is conducted according to an experimental design procedure for a revised road network representing downtown Boise, Idaho. The issues that are tested in the simulation include: (1) whether the DSRS improves traffic performance when compared with the case without the DSRS; (2) how the DSRS performs compared with a reservation system that uses a First Come First Serve principle; and (3) how the specific DSRS parameters (such as, the relative importance of throughput versus revenue generation) influence network system performance. Conclusions and future research recommendations are provided based on the insights from the simulation modeling work.     

A new shared vehicle system for urban areas

The paper concerns the conceptual design of a transport system for pedestrian areas. The proposed transport system is based on a fleet of eco-sustainable Personal Intelligent City Accessible Vehicles (PICAVs). The vehicles are shared through the day by different users and the following specific services will be provided: instant access, open ended reservation and one way trips. Referring to the proposed transport system, a new methodology to optimise the fleet dimension and its distribution among the stations is proposed in this paper. The problem faced is an optimisation problem where the cost function to be minimised takes into account both the transport system cost and the user costs that depend on the waiting times. A random search algorithm has been adopted. Given a fleet dimension and its distribution among the stations, the waiting times of the users are assessed by a microscopic simulation. The simulation model tracks the second-by-second activity of each PICAV user, as well as the second-by-second activity of each vehicle. The overall methodology has been implemented in an object-oriented simulator. The proposed transport system has been planned and simulated for the historical city centre of Genoa, Italy.     

A model for optimizing electronic toll collection systems

This paper examines the deployment of electronic toll collection (ETC) and develops a model to maximize social welfare associated with a toll plaza. A payment choice model estimates the share of traffic using ETC as a function of delay, price, and a fixed cost of acquiring the in-vehicle transponder. Delay in turn depends on the relative number of ETC and manual collection lanes. Price depends on the discount given to users of the ETC lanes. The fixed cost of acquiring the transponder (not simply a monetary cost, but also the effort involved in signing up for the program) is a key factor in the model. Once a traveler acquires the transponder, the cost of choosing ETC in the future declines significantly. Welfare depends on the market share of ETC, and includes delay and gasoline consumption, toll collection costs, and social costs such as air pollution. This work examines the best combination of ETC lanes and toll discount to maximize welfare. Too many ETC lanes cause excessive delay to non-equipped users. Too high a discount costs the highway agency revenue needed to operate the facility. The model is applied to California’s Carquinez Bridge, and recommendations are made concerning the number of dedicated ETC lanes and the appropriate ETC discount.