Congestion in a city with a central bottleneck

TY - JOUR

T1 - Congestion in a city with a central bottleneck

AU - Fosgerau, Mogens

AU - de Palma, André

PY - 2012/5

Y1 - 2012/5

N2 - We consider dynamic congestion in an urban setting where trip origins are spatially distributed. All travelers must pass through a downtown bottleneck in order to reach their destination in the CBD. Each traveler chooses departure time to maximize general concave scheduling utility. We find that, at equilibrium, travelers sort according to their distance to the destination; the queue is always unimodal regardless of the spatial distribution of trip origins. We construct a welfare maximizing tolling regime, which eliminates congestion. All travelers located beyond a critical distance from the CBD gain from tolling, even when toll revenues are not redistributed, while nearby travelers lose. We discuss our results in the context of acceptability of tolling policies.

AB - We consider dynamic congestion in an urban setting where trip origins are spatially distributed. All travelers must pass through a downtown bottleneck in order to reach their destination in the CBD. Each traveler chooses departure time to maximize general concave scheduling utility. We find that, at equilibrium, travelers sort according to their distance to the destination; the queue is always unimodal regardless of the spatial distribution of trip origins. We construct a welfare maximizing tolling regime, which eliminates congestion. All travelers located beyond a critical distance from the CBD gain from tolling, even when toll revenues are not redistributed, while nearby travelers lose. We discuss our results in the context of acceptability of tolling policies.

KW - Acceptability

KW - Dynamic model

KW - Spatial differentiation

KW - Toll policy

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84856088664&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.jue.2011.12.002

DO - 10.1016/j.jue.2011.12.002

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:84856088664

SN - 0094-1190

VL - 71

SP - 269

EP - 277

JO - Journal of Urban Economics

JF - Journal of Urban Economics

IS - 3

ER -