Model-Based Dynamic Toll Pricing: An Overview

In this paper, we review some of the most recent research regarding design, simulation, implementation and evaluation of dynamic tolling schemes. Analyzing the structure of the reviewed studies, we identify the common elements and the differences in the approaches chosen by different authors, presenting an overview of the methods for price definition and of the simulation techniques as well as a discussion on the newest technology applications in the field. Optimization revealed to be the dominant price definition method, while control-based algorithms are notably employed for managed lanes toll pricing schemes. Regarding traffic and driver behavior simulation we observed a great variety of solutions throughout the reviewed papers, with a prevalence of macroscopic models for the former and logit models for the latter. Still few papers include models for externalities quantification, while AI paradigms are gaining importance in the field.

Dynamic Toll Pricing using Dynamic Traffic Assignment System with Online Calibration

The paper presents a toll pricing methodology using a dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) system. This methodology relies on the DTA system’s capability to understand and predict traffic conditions, thus enhanced online calibration methodologies are applied to the DTA system, featuring a heuristic technique to calibrate supply parameters online. Improved offline calibration techniques are developed to apply toll pricing in a real network consisting of managed lanes and general purpose lanes. The online calibration methodologies are tested using real data from this network, and the results find the DTA system able to estimate and predict traffic flow and speed with satisfactory accuracy under congestion. Toll pricing is formulated as an optimization problem to maximize toll revenue, subject to network conditions and tolling regulations. Travelers are assumed to make route choice based on offline calibrated discrete choice models. Toll optimization is applied in a closed-loop evaluation framework where a microscopic simulator is used to mimic the real network. Online calibration of the DTA system is enabled to ensure good optimization performance. Toll optimization is tested under multiple experimental scenarios, and the methodology is found able to increase toll revenue compared with the condition when online calibration is not available. It should be noted that the toll rates and revenues presented in this paper are obtained in a simulation environment based on the calibration and optimization algorithms, and as the work is ongoing these results are far from being a recommendation to operators of managed lanes.