The interactin between tolls and capacity investment in serial and parallel transport networks

The purpose of this paper is to compare the interaction between pricing and capacity decisions on simple serial and parallel transport networks. When individual links of the network are operated by different regional or national authorities, toll and capacity competition is likely to result. Moreover, the problem is potentially complicated by the presence of both local and transit demand on each link of the network. We bring together and extend the recent literature on the topic and, using both theory and numerical simulation techniques, provide a careful comparison of toll and capacity interaction on serial and parallel network structures. First, we show that there is more tax exporting in serial transport corridors than on competing parallel road networks. Second, the inability to toll transit has quite dramatic negative welfare effects on parallel networks. On the contrary, in serial transport corridors it may actually be undesirable to allow the tolling of transit at all. Third, if the links are exclusively used by transit transport, toll and capacity decisions are independent in serial networks. This does not generally hold in the presence of local transport. Moreover, it contrasts with a parallel setting where regional authorities compete for transit; in that case, regional investment in capacity leads to lower Nash equilibrium tolls.congestion pricing, transport investment, transit traffic

Modelling network travel time reliability under stochastic demand

A technique is proposed for estimating the probability distribution of total network travel time, in the light of normal day-to-day variations in the travel demand matrix over a road traffic network. A solution method is proposed, based on a single run of a standard traffic assignment model, which operates in two stages. In stage one, moments of the total travel time distribution are computed by an analytic method, based on the multivariate moments of the link flow vector. In stage two, a flexible family of density functions is fitted to these moments. It is discussed how the resulting distribution may in practice be used to characterise unreliability. Illustrative numerical tests are reported on a simple network, where the method is seen to provide a means for identifying sensitive or vulnerable links, and for examining the impact on network reliability of changes to link capacities. Computational considerations for large networks, and directions for further research, are discussed

The interaction between tolls and capacity investment in serial and parallel transport networks.

Investment; Serial; Transport; Networks; Working;

The interaction between tolls and capacity investment in serial and parallel transport networks

The purpose of this paper is to compare the interaction between pricing and capacity decisions on simple serial and parallel transport networks. When individual links of the network are operated by different regional or national authorities, toll and capacity competition is likely to result. Moreover, the problem is potentially complicated by the presence of both local and transit demand on each link of the network. We bring together and extend the recent literature on the topic and, using both theory and numerical simulation techniques, provide a careful comparison of toll and capacity interaction on serial and parallel network structures. First, we show that there is more tax exporting in serial transport corridors than on competing parallel road networks. Second, the inability to toll transit has quite dramatic negative welfare effects on parallel networks. On the contrary, in serial transport corridors it may actually be undesirable to allow the tolling of transit at all. Third, if the links are exclusively used by transit transport, toll and capacity decisions are independent in serial networks. This does not generally hold in the presence of local transport. Moreover, it contrasts with a parallel setting where regional authorities compete for transit; in that case, regional investment in capacity leads to lower Nash equilibrium tolls.congestion pricing, transport investment, transit traffic

Market Structure and the Taxation of International Trade

The paper compares non-cooperative commodity taxation under the destination and origin principles under a variety of different assumptions about market structure. We consider a model of international duopoly with either quantity or price competition of firms and either segmented or integrated markets, and a monopolistic competition model with mobile firms. In each setting the international spillovers of tax policy are isolated and evaluated at the Pareto efficient tax rate. The sign of the net spillover, and thus the direction that commodity tax competition will take, depends critically on whether lump-sum taxes are available or commodity taxes must be used to finance the government budget.tax competition, market imperfections, international trade

The interaction between tolls and capacity investment in serial and parallel transport networks.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the interaction between pricing and capacity decisions on simple serial and parallel transport networks. When individual links of the network are operated by different regional or national authorities, toll and capacity competition is likely to result. Moreover, the problem is potentially complicated by the presence of both local and transit demand on each link of the network. We bring together and extend the recent literature on the topic and, using both theory and numerical simulation techniques, provide a careful comparison of toll and capacity interaction on serial and parallel network structures. First, we show that there is more tax exporting in serial transport corridors than on competing parallel road networks. Second, the inability to toll transit has quite dramatic negative welfare effects on parallel networks. On the contrary, in serial transport corridors it may actually be undesirable to allow the tolling of transit at all. Third, if the links are exclusively used by transit transport, toll and capacity decisions are independent in serial networks. This does not generally hold in the presence of local transport. Moreover, it contrasts with a parallel setting where regional authorities compete for transit; in that case, regional investment in capacity leads to lower Nash equilibrium tolls.Congestion pricing; Transport investment; Transit traffic;

Route vs. segment: an experiment on real-time travel information in congestible networks

We report the results of an experimental study of route choice in congestible networks with a common origin and common destination. In one condition, in each round of play network users independently committed themselves at the origin to a three-segment route; in the other condition, they chose route segments sequentially at each network junction upon receiving en route information. At the end of each round, players received ex-post complete information about the distribution of the route choices. Although the complexity of the network defies analysis by common users, traffic patterns in both conditions converged rapidly to the equilibrium solution. We account for the observed results by a Markov adaptive learning model postulating regret minimization and inertia. We find that subjects' learning behavior was similar across conditions, except that they exhibited more inertia in the condition with en route information