Paper Details

TRB 91st Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Event Number:	733
Event Title:	Addressing Equity in Generating Transportation Revenues
Event Date:	Jan 25 2012 10:15AM- 12:00PM
Event Location:	Hilton, International West
Event Description:
Event Agenda:	In order to meet transportation investment needs, various options for funding must be carefully considered. This session will examine the importance of equity and fairness in the ways transportation revenues are generated, particularly in regard to the distribution of benefits and costs, and how such distributions could be considered appropriate.

Efficiency and Equity of Pricing Strategies for Cars and Transit (12-4465)

This study is based on the morning commute bottleneck model introduced by Vickrey (1969). The contribution of this work is in showing an analytical comparison of the efficiency and equity of three pricing strategies when users can choose to use car or public transit, and when they travel. This analysis considers a temporally distributed demand, and closed form solutions are presented for the special case where a population of otherwise identical individuals wish to pass the bottleneck at a constant rate during the rush. The results show that although optimal time-dependent pricing is the most efficient strategy, there is a trade-off in equity for commuters. Analysis of a second-best alternative addresses a more feasible pricing strategy for implementation, and this is important because of the technical and political barriers for time-dependent pricing. Furthermore, alternative pricing strategies may be preferred if the goal for a pricing program is not strictly to maximize efficiency.

Authors
Gonzales, Eric J., Rutgers University