The Gothenburg congestion charge. Effects,design and politics

This paper summarizes the traffic effects of the Gothenburg congestion charges introduced in 2013. The system is similar to the system introduced in Stockholm in 2006; both are designed as time-of-day dependent cordon pricing systems. We find that many effects and adaptation strategies are similar to those found in Stockholm, indicating a high transferability between smaller and larger cities with substantial differences in public transport use. However, there are also important differences regarding some of the effects, the accuracy of the model forecasts and public support arising from different topologies, public transport use, congestion levels and main objectives communicated to the public. Finally, the Gothenburg case suggests that whether congestion charges are introduced or not depends on the support among the political parties, and that this is determined primarily by the prevailing institutional setting and power over revenues, and to a lower extent by the public support, and benefits from congestion reduction.     

Traffic and emissions impact of congestion charging in the central Beijing urban area: A simulation analysis

Congestion charging is being considered as a potential measure to address the issue of substantially increased traffic congestion and vehicle emissions in Beijing. This study assessed the impact of congestion charging on traffic and emissions in Beijing using macroscopic traffic simulation and vehicle emissions calculation. Multiple testing scenarios were developed with assumptions in different charging zone sizes, public transit service levels and charging methods. Our analysis results showed that congestion charging in Beijing may increase public transit use by approximately 13%, potentially reduce CO and HC emissions by 60–70%, and reduce NOx emissions by 35–45% within the charging zone. However, congestion charging may also result in increased travel activities and emissions outside of the charging zone and a slight increase in emissions for the entire urban area. The size of charging zone, charging method, and charging rate are key factors that directly influence the impact of congestion charging; improved public transit service needs to be considered as a complementary approach with congestion charging. This study is used by Beijing Transportation Environment and Energy Center (BTEC) as reference to support the development of Beijing’s congestion charging policy and regulation.     

Airline delays,congestion internalization and non-price spillover effects of low cost carrier entry

This paper develops an econometric model of flight delays to investigate the influence of competition and dominance on the incentives of carriers to maintain on-time performance. We consider both the route and the airport levels to inspect the local and global effects of competition, with a unifying framework to test the hypotheses of 1. airport congestion internalization and 2. the market competition-quality relationship in a single econometric model. In particular, we examine the impacts of the entry of low cost carriers (LCC) on the flight delays of incumbent full service carriers in the Brazilian airline industry. The main results indicate a highly significant effect of airport congestion self-internalization in parallel with route-level quality competition. Additionally, the potential competition caused by LCC presence provokes a global effect that suggests the existence of non-price spillovers of the LCC entry to non-entered routes.     

Indicators of reliability and vulnerability: Similarities and differences in ranking links of a complex road system

This article investigates two performance attributes of road networks, reliability and vulnerability, analyzing their similarities as well as the differences that justify distinct definitions, based on consolidation of recent studies. We also discuss the indicators found in the literature for these two performance attributes. Since various authors treat vulnerability as an aspect of reliability instead of a specific attribute, we carried out an application to a complex road network representative of the city of Rio de Janeiro to check the suitability of this approach. The results show that the vulnerability indicators are more strongly affected by the characteristics of alternative routes while the reliability metrics are more sensitive to the congestion level. The conclusion is that reliability and vulnerability should be treated distinctly for evaluating the performance of road network links.     

Including congestion effects in urban road traffic CO2 emissions modelling: Do Local Government Authorities have the right options?

Tailpipe emissions from vehicles on urban road networks have damaging impacts, with the problem exacerbated by the common occurrence of congestion. This article focuses on carbon dioxide because it is the largest constituent of road traffic greenhouse gas emissions. Local Government Authorities (LGAs) are typically responsible for facilitating mitigation of these emissions, and critical to this task is the ability to assess the impact of transport interventions on road traffic emissions for a whole network.This article presents a contemporary review of literature concerning road traffic data and its use by LGAs in emissions models (EMs). Emphasis on the practicalities of using data readily available to LGAs to estimate network level emissions and inform effective policy is a relatively new research area, and this article summarises achievements so far. Results of the literature review indicate that readily available data are aggregated at traffic level rather than disaggregated at individual vehicle level. Hence, a hypothesis is put forward that optimal EM complexity is one using traffic variables as inputs, allowing LGAs to capture the influence of congestion whilst avoiding the complexity of detailed EMs that estimate emissions at vehicle level.Existing methodologies for estimating network emissions based on traffic variables typically have limitations. Conclusions are that LGAs do not necessarily have the right options, and that more research in this domain is required, both to quantify accuracy and to further develop EMs that explicitly include congestion, whilst remaining within LGA resource constraints.     

Policy packages for modal shift and CO2 reduction in Lille,France

This paper proposes different policy scenarios to cut CO₂ emissions caused by the urban mobility of passengers. More precisely, we compare the effects of the ‘direct tool’ of carbon tax, to a combination of ‘indirect tools’ – not originally aimed at reducing CO₂ (i.e. congestion charging, parking charges and a reduction in public transport travel time) in terms of CO₂ impacts through a change in the modal split. In our model, modal choices depend on individual characteristics, trip features (including the effects of policy tools), and land use at origin and destination zones. Personal “CO₂ emissions budgets” resulting from the trips observed in the metropolitan area of Lille (France) in 2006 are calculated and compared to the situation related to the different policy scenarios. We find that an increase of 50% in parking charges combined with a cordon toll of €1.20 and a 10% travel time decrease in public transport services (made after recycling toll-revenues) is the winning scenario. The combined effects of all the policy scenarios are superior to their separate effects.     

基于GPS技术的实时拥挤收费系统

通过拥挤收费来缓解中心城市交通拥挤,是交通管理者探讨的一个热点,也出现了一些成功实施的案例。针对目前ERP系统的不足,本文利用ITS先进技术将拥挤收费与交通信息平台相结合,提出一个基于GPS技术的实时拥挤收费系统,描述了系统的工作流程与基本功能,并且建立起多车型多准则弹性需求下的拥挤收费费率优化双层规划模型。     

城市中心区拥挤收费系统评价方法

本文介绍了拥挤收费系统的概念,提出了拥挤收费系统的综合评价指标及评价方法.最后设计了中心区拥挤收费方案,对中心区拥挤收费方案进行了评价.     

交通拥挤收费原理与对策研究

交通拥挤收费（Oongestion Pricing）作为现代化城市交通需求管理（TDM）的有效措施之一，虽然在实践中颇多微词，但是其在减少交通吸引、控制交通流量、提高车速与路段通行能力、提高能源利用效率及提高路网的运行效率等方面效果显著，并且在缓解交通拥堵压力的同时带来了财政副收入。从经济学原理出发，利用边际成本定价理论、收入再分配理论以及公共产品和产权经济学理论分析了交通拥挤收费的本质、理论依据，最后提出交通拥挤收费的相关建议和措施。     

Experienced travel time prediction for congested freeways

Travel time is an important performance measure for transportation systems, and dissemination of travel time information can help travelers make reliable travel decisions such as route choice or departure time. Since the traffic data collected in real time reflects the past or current conditions on the roadway, a predictive travel time methodology should be used to obtain the information to be disseminated. However, an important part of the literature either uses instantaneous travel time assumption, and sums the travel time of roadway segments at the starting time of the trip, or uses statistical forecasting algorithms to predict the future travel time. This study benefits from the available traffic flow fundamentals (e.g. shockwave analysis and bottleneck identification), and makes use of both historical and real time traffic information to provide travel time prediction. The methodological framework of this approach sequentially includes a bottleneck identification algorithm, clustering of traffic data in traffic regimes with similar characteristics, development of stochastic congestion maps for clustered data and an online congestion search algorithm, which combines historical data analysis and real-time data to predict experienced travel times at the starting time of the trip. The experimental results based on the loop detector data on Californian freeways indicate that the proposed method provides promising travel time predictions under varying traffic conditions.