Congestion pricing is defined as charging motorists during peak hours to encourage them to either switch their travel times or to use alternative routes. The theory behind road pricing suggests that, in order to reach social optimum conditions, a toll needs to be charged which is equal to the difference between social marginal costs and private average costs of users. In recent years, with the help of technological developments such as electronic toll collection system, pricing can be done dynamically, that is, tolls can be set in a real-time fashion according to the on-line measured traffic conditions. Dynamic pricing is only being used in High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes. However time-dependent pricing idea can be used in a network setting where drivers have to make route choices that are relatively more complex than the choices they make in the case of HOT lanes. This thesis proposes a simulation-based evaluation of dynamic congestion pricing on the crossings of New York City where many of the limited number of crossings to the island of Manhattan are tolled and function as parallel alternatives. One of the key aspects of this study is the estimation of realistic values of time (VOT) for different classes of users, namely, commuters and commercial vehicles. New York region-specific VOT for commercial vehicles is estimated using a logit model of stated preference data. Two different simulation studies are conducted. First simulation study is performed using the software TransModeler by considering the Manhattan network with a simple step-wise dynamic tolling algorithm and modeling the driver behavior by taking VOT into consideration. In the second simulation study, a tolling algorithm which is applicable to two tolled alternative crossings is developed. The algorithm includes real time toll rate calculation depending on travel times on crossings and models the driver behavior in response to toll rates and real-time measured travel time information on alternative routes. The algorithm is tested in traffic simulation software Paramics on a network including the two tunnels between New Jersey and New York City with a microscopic simulation of the traffic entering Manhattan.M.S.Includes bibliographical referencesby Ender Faruk Morgu
