Dynamic Congestion and Tolls with Mobile Source Emission

Abstract

This paper proposes a dynamic congestion pricing model that takes into account mobile source emissions. We consider a tollable vehicular network where the users selfishly minimize their own travel costs, including travel time, early/late arrival penalties and tolls. On top of that, we assume that part of the network can be tolled by a central authority, whose objective is to minimize both total travel costs of road users and total emission on a network-wide level. The model is formulated as a mathematical program with equilibrium constraints (MPEC) problem and then reformulated as a mathematical program with complementarity constraints (MPCC). The MPCC is solved using a quadratic penalty-based gradient projection algorithm. A numerical study on a toy network illustrates the effectiveness of the tolling strategy and reveals a Braess-type paradox in the context of traffic-derived emission.