Tradable credit scheme for rush hour travel choice with heterogeneous commuters

Abstract

This article proposes a tradable credit scheme for managing commuters’ travel choices. The scheme considers bottleneck congestion and modal split in a competitive highway–transit network with heterogeneous commuters who are distinguished by their valuation of travel time. The scheme charges all auto travelers who pass the bottleneck during a peak-time window in the form of mobility credits. Those who avoid the peak-time window, by either traveling outside the peak-time window or switching to the transit mode, may be rewarded credits. An artificial market is created so that the travelers may trade these credits with each other. We formulate the credit price and the rewarded and charged credits under tradable credit scheme. Our analyses indicate that the optimal tradable credit scheme can achieve nearly 40% efficiency gains depending on the level of commuters’ heterogeneity. In addition, this scheme distributes the benefits among all the commuters directly through the credit trading. Our results suggest that in assessing the efficiency of tradable credit scheme, it is important to take into account the commuters’ heterogeneity. Numerical experiments are conducted to examine the sensitivity of tradable credit scheme designs to various system parameters.