Bilevel Optimization in Multiobjective Road Pricing: A Cooperative Approach

Description of research

Traffic externalities such as congestion, air pollution, high noise levels, accident rates and road maintenance costs are becoming increasingly problematic in many countries of the world. It is envisaged that road pricing is a promising tool to alleviate many of these problems by steering the individual network user so as to achieve a certain goal (e.g., to minimize congestion in the resulting traffic equilibrium). The computation of tolls minimizing a certain objective (such as congestion or accident rates) can be formulated and solved as a bilevel optimization problem. Our main interest is to analyze from a game theoretical perspective the situation where various actors like, e.g., the ministry for economics, the ministry for environment and private insurance companies ask for various - usually conflicting - road pricing schemes in order to support their different goals. With the present project we intend to investigate when and how a “cooperative” solution concept in form of a common road pricing scheme can be found. We expect that this study leads to “fair tolling schemes” that can also be used in a future Dutch tolling system (Anders Betalen voor Mobiliteit or ABvM).

Advisor(s)

Prof. Dr. Ir. Eric van Berkum (Centre for Transport Studies)

Dr. Walter Kern (Discrete Mathematics and Mathematics Programming)

Dr. Georg Still (Discrete Mathematics and Mathematics Programming)

Duration

2010 - 2014

Project

Road Pricing

ABvM - Anders Betalen voor Mobiliteit (PAYD - Pay as you drive)

Funding institution

CTIT

Strategic Research Orientation

IE&ICT

Links to relevant web pages:

http://www.vvr.ctw.utwente.nl/staff/ohazulike/

http://www.vvr.ctw.utwente.nl/en

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