The use of land for roadways in a growing Mills-de Ferranti urban area

Article Abstract:

Certain sections of existing roadways which are used by workers in commuting to a central business district become more prone to congestion as the urban area expands as a result of population growth. In response to this, government planners are required to select an area of land that can be allocated to roadways at the existing border of the urban area. As a solution, a socially optimal allocation of land to roadways is proposed for a growing urban area where certain sections of the roadways cannot be widened after being put in place. Assuming that there is linear population growth, the best strategy is to endogenously determine the constant optimal fraction of land for roadways as the urban boundary extends outward. Such fraction is determined by the interest rate, a population growth variable, three parameters of the commuting cost function, the agricultural opportunity cost of land, and the population density on residential land.

City planning, Urban planning, Land use, Highway planning

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Peak-load pricing of a transportation route with an unpriced substitute

Article Abstract:

A study examines peak-load pricing of a transportation route with an unpriced substitute. The analysis considers two routes to work that both experience bottleneck-and-queue congestion. These could be two bridges, a freeway and a toll road, or roadway travel and subway travel. The first-best solution can be determined if peak-load pricing is possible on both routes. However, in a situation where only one is unpriced, the other route should feature a second-best time-dependent toll that is negative at the tails of the rush hour, positive near the rush-hour peak, and zero on average. When the two routes can carry the same capacities, and when the parameter of the schedule delay cost function is one, two-thirds of the total traffic should select the priced route, and the efficiency increase of second-best pricing is two-thirds of the efficiency increase of first-best pricing.

Models, Management, Traffic engineering, Traffic flow, Tolls

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Uniform versus peak-load pricing of a bottleneck with elastic demand

Article Abstract:

An analysis of commuting patterns which contain a bottleneck such as a bridge or tunnel, indicates that in the presence of elastic demand, tolls can eliminate inefficient queueing. The model assumes that that drivers are rationally choosing crossing times to minimize costs, including queuing time, being late to work, and tolls. Research also assumes demand is elastic since, in the medium- or long-run, consumers can change jobs or residences. The presence of no tolls creates significant efficiency losses because of queuing and does not change total traffic volume. Optimal peak-load tolls eliminate queuing with no change to traffic volume. A second-best toll, adopted because of political or administrative restraints, does not eliminate queuing but reduces traffic, yielding a gain in efficiency.

Analysis, Urban economics, Queuing theory

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