Optimizing One-day Driving Restriction using Mathematical Programming

Received 26 January 2018 Accepted 30 March 2018 Abstract—A one-day driving restriction prohibits drivers from operating their vehicles on a given weekday in an attempt to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. A restricted weekday is assigned based on vehicles’ license number, which is somewhat random. The one-day driving restriction has been popular in developing countries due to the low cost of implementation. However, it has not been effective in reducing air pollution in the long run. Many studies have pointed out that there is an incentive for the household to purchase an old used vehicle, which might have high emission potential, to circumvent the restriction. In addition, as shown in this paper, households drive more on non-restricted weekdays to compensate for lost driving time, creating a substitution effect which may lead to increased emissions. We propose a one-day driving restriction based on mathematically assigned household vehicle registrations rather than a randomly assigned license plate number. This is valuable in overcoming flaws of the current one-day driving restriction to increase opportunity cost of cheating as such, the new one-day driving restriction will increase the cost of buying the second vehicle. Furthermore, the mathematical programming model is utilized to assign the restricted weekday to each household, while also optimizing the distribution of high and low emission vehicles on the road to reduce air pollution effectively. The numerical simulation illustrates that the goal of driving restriction is achieved.