Sequential experimental approach for congestion pricing with multiple vehicle types and multiple time periods

This paper develops a sequential experimental approach for the optimal congestion pricing problem on a general transportation network with multiple vehicle types and multiple time periods. The approach explicitly considers the interaction among different types of vehicular flow and the interdependence of demand among various origin–destination (O–D) pairs and in different time periods. Toll charge on each link in each period is differentiated across vehicle types on the basis of their observable differences to reflect their different congestion externalities. The evolutionary pricing scheme updates link tolls from only observed link flows without requiring explicit forms of demand functions. Given a trial of toll pattern, the revealed link flows can be observed easily; then a new set of tolls can be determined based on the observed flow volume and sequentially used for next trial. The detailed implementation procedure is examined with both theoretical analyses and numerical experiments.