Partial Equilibrium Analysis of Socially Optimal Pricing and Capacity of a Congestible Highway with an Elastic Demand

This paper used a spatial model of a one-dimensional city. The paper confirms that the socially optimal policies such as pricing and capacity of a congestible highway remain the same as the conventional model of point-to-point network. The paper extends this base-line model to the case of vertical disintegration in which ownership and operation is separated. Both the private and public ownership under the private operation are analyzed. The results show that in case of separated private ownership and operation, double marginalization occurs. That is, both the operator and the owner charges congestion tolls. In the case of public ownership, the owner sets the negative leasing fee so that the toll becomes equal to marginal congestion costs, thus achieving the social optimum. Following the analysis of a case where all the travelers are heading to the central business district (CBD) as above, the paper analyzes the multi-destination problem where travelers’ destinations are distributed over the stretch of highway. The problem reduces to an optimal control problem with integral state equations, for which the optimality conditions are still the same that the socially optimal toll is equal to the congestion externality and that the optimal capacity is such that the marginal benefit and costs are equated.

• Corporate Authors:

  World Conference on Transport Research Society

  Secretariat, 14 Avenue Berthelot
  69363 Lyon cedex 07,   France 
• Authors:
  • Yoshida, Yuichiro
• Conference:
  • 11th World Conference on Transport Research
  • Location: Berkeley CA, United States
  • Date: 2007-6-24 to 2007-6-28
• Publication Date: 2007

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: References;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: 11th World Conference on Transport Research

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Automobile ownership; Benefit cost analysis; Central business districts; Equilibrium (Economics); Highway capacity; Optimization; Ownership, leasing and rental; Road pricing; Social factors; Traffic congestion; Travel demand
• Subject Areas: Finance; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I10: Economics and Administration; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01122368
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Feb 19 2009 2:43PM