Endogenous Scheduling Preferences and Congestion

This paper describes how the Vickrey bottleneck model is a much used work horse for the analysis of congestion. Vickrey's model regards travelers' preferences regarding the timing of trips as exogenous. This paper provides a more fundamental view of travelers who derive utility just from consumption and leisure. Agglomeration economies at home and at work lead to scheduling preferences forming endogenously in equilibrium and a queue that looks like Vickrey would assume. However, the policy implications change. Call, for ease of exposition, a "Vickrey" someone who has adopted the Vickrey model, even when the present model with endogenous scheduling preferences is true. A Vickrey, observing untolled equilibrium and taking scheduling preferences as exogenous, would under-invest in capacity, underestimate the marginal external cost of congestion, fail to identify the optimal time varying toll and underestimate its benefits. In contrast to the case of exogenous scheduling preferences, travelers gain from optimal time varying tolling, even if revenues are not returned. Consider a continuum of N homogeneous workers. Each worker must start his day at home and end his day at work. Utility is a strictly concave and strictly increasing function of effective leisure produced at home and output produced at work, U(H,W), with the interpretation that work output is exchanged for consumption at a constant price normalized to one. Time is measured as an interval. Transit between home and work occurs through a one-way bottleneck. Capacity is assumed large enough that all workers can pass through the bottleneck during a day and still have time left over.

• Record URL:
  • https://aetransport.org/past-etc-papers/conference-papers-pre-2009/conference-papers-2010
• Corporate Authors:

  Association for European Transport (AET)

  1 Vernon Mews, Vernon Street, West Kensington
  London W14 0RL,    
• Authors:
  • Fosgerau, M
  • Small, K
• Conference:
  • European Transport Conference, 2010
  • Location: Glasgow Scotland, United Kingdom
  • Date: 2010-10-11 to 2010-10-13
• Publication Date: 2010

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Pagination: v.p.
• Monograph Title: European Transport Conference, 2010 Proceedings

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bottlenecks; Leisure time; Public transit; Schedules and scheduling; Stated preferences; Toll roads; Traffic congestion; Travel time; Work trips
• Uncontrolled Terms: Agglomeration; Endogeneity
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01353878
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Oct 19 2011 12:52PM