Evaluating Regional Pricing Strategies in San Francisco--Application of the SFCTA Activity-Based Regional Pricing Model

This paper evaluates the performance of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority’s recently-enhanced Nine-County Regional Pricing Model (RPM-9), which is being used to study congestion pricing alternatives in San Francisco as a part of the Mobility, Access, and Pricing Study. This study sought to evaluate comprehensive pricing and mobility-enhancing packages to improve access and offer more sustainable travel choices to and within San Francisco. The Study tested various pricing scenarios including cordon, area, and gateway designs; various toll levels; and a range of shoulder pricing/time of day profiles. Pricing scenarios were coupled with strategies for improving accessibility for all modes of travel to, from, and within San Francisco including, but not limited to, local and regional transit investments. RPM-9’s structure as a tour-based microsimulation model allowed several enhancements for this study that would not have been possible in a trip-based framework. These include the use of value-of-time distributions, rather than averages across groups; the feedback of mode and destination choice logsums to make auto ownership and tour generation sensitive to price; the explicit tracking of travelers who have paid area tolls; and enhanced peak spreading models. The disaggregate nature of RPM-9 facilitated summaries of key measures of effectiveness at various levels and types of aggregation including income level, residential location, and work location. These flexible summaries were critical to evaluating alternatives and answering questions about who was paying versus who was benefiting.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Sall, Elizabeth
  • Bent, Elizabeth
  • Koehler, Jesse
  • Charlton, Billy
  • Erhardt, Gregory D
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2010-1-10 to 2010-1-14
• Date: 2010

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: DVD
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 14p
• Monograph Title: TRB 89th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accessibility; Activity choices; Congestion pricing; Mobility; Mode choice; Road pricing; Sustainable transportation; Travel surveys; Value of time
• Uncontrolled Terms: Activity based modeling
• Geographic Terms: San Francisco Bay Area
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01155623
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 10-0121
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Apr 28 2010 7:32AM