Optimal Road User Charging Cordon Design: A Heuristic Optimization Approach

This paper studies the optimal design problem of selecting a charging cordon (CC) in a general traffic network. A CC is a set of tolled links surrounding a designated area so all travelers passing through this area will be tolled. Network travelers are assumed to respond to tolls imposed by adjusting their behaviors to achieve a new equilibrium following Wardrop's equilibrium condition. The necessity of this equilibrium condition is imposed as a constraint in the optimal CC design problem. This problem can be categorized as a Mathematical Program with Equilibrium Constraints (MPEC). This paper presents an innovative Genetic Algorithm (GA) based method to solve the problem. A new framework (branch-tree framework) is developed to represent a closed CC so that the method of GA can be used. The method is tested with a network of Edinburgh. Although the proposed GA is a heuristic based method, the optimization result in the test is very promising. The optimal closed CC as found by the GA produces a much higher benefit than that of judgmental cordons.

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