Simultaneous determination of optimal toll locations and toll levels in cordon-based congestion pricing problem

The congestion pricing has been discussed as a practical tool for traffic management on urban transport networks. The traffic congestion is defined as an external diseconomy on the network in transport economics. It has been proposed that the congestion pricing would be used to reduce the traffic on the network. This paper investigates the cordon-based second-best congestion-pricing problems on road networks, including optimal selection of both toll levels and toll locations. A road network is viewed as a directed graph and the cutest concept in graph theory is used to describe the mathematical properties of a toll cordon by examining the incidence matrix of the network. Maximization of social welfare is sought subject to the elastic-demand traffic equilibrium constraint. A mathematical programming model with mixed (integer and continuous) variables is formulated and solved by use of two genetic algorithms for simultaneous determination of the toll levels and cordon location on the networks. The model and algorithm are demonstrated in the road network of Mashhad CBD.