Modeling the Impact of Dynamic Tolling in Large-scale Regional Networks: a Case Study for DVRPC

Recent years have witnessed a sharp decline in national highway trust fund that is primarily used to support infrastructure construction, expansion and retrofit. This is a challenging and critical issue for almost all states, including Pennsylvania. The primary reason is due to the decline of gas tax collected at gas pumps as a result of adaption of high fuel efficiency vehicles. The most recent and ongoing COVID-19 crisis adds additional burden to this lack of public funds for infrastructure, since the overall travel demand declines drastically. Most of states are currently evaluating the implications of tax loss, and proactively developing plan to collect funds in a more equitable and effective manner. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has lately given the green light for a proposal that could add tolls on an undetermined number of bridges, as a way to collect funding to support infrastructure. It imposes a challenge how to effectively and accurately evaluate the societal consequences of tolling of various forms, including social equity, congestion delay, emission, fuel use and potential toll revenue. In this research project, the study team aims to develop a large-scale multi-class network modeling and simulation framework, particularly for Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), that holistically models the spatio-temporal behaviors of private cars, ride-hailing cars, freight trucks, respectively. The result includes the prediction of travel time, travel delay, vehicle-mile-traveled and emissions for each of those vehicle classes and travel modes, either at road and intersection level or averaged at community level by time of day. Potential tolling strategies, such as locations and pricing, can be evaluated and deployed, with the trade-off among tolling revenue, system mobility and social equity.

• Record URL:
  https://ppms.cit.cmu.edu/projects/detail/357

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $50000
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3551747111

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Carnegie Mellon University

  Mobility21 National USDOT UTC for Mobility of Goods and People
  Pittsburgh, PA  United States  15213

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Center Program
  ,    
• Managing Organizations:

  Carnegie Mellon University

  Mobility21 National USDOT UTC for Mobility of Goods and People
  Pittsburgh, PA  United States  15213
• Project Managers:

  Kline, Robin

• Performing Organizations:

  Carnegie Mellon University

  ,    
• Principal Investigators:

  Qian, Sean

• Start Date: 20210701
• Expected Completion Date: 20220830
• Actual Completion Date: 20231231
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Case studies; Economic impacts; Environmental impacts; Equity (Justice); Financing; Infrastructure; Mathematical models; Regional transportation; Revenues; Simulation; Social impacts; Tolls
• Identifier Terms: Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission; Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
• Geographic Terms: Pennsylvania
• Subject Areas: Environment; Finance; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01776454
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National University Transportation Center for Improving Mobility (Mobility21)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3551747111
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Jul 13 2021 1:18PM