Congestion and Incentives in the Age of Driverless Cars

Abstract

Fleets of ridesharing companies, such as Uber and Lyft, are providing an increasing share of passenger travel. Autonomous vehicles will likely only magnify this trend. We analyze the welfare effects of the transition from a decentralized regime, in which travelers are atomistic and do not internalize the congestion externality, to a centralized regime, where travelers are supplied by a monopolist's fleet. The monopolist can sort travelers across routes based on their congestion disutility, and ration them. A centralized regime is always welfare-reducing when the monopolist chooses not to ration travelers. We then characterize optimal road taxes throughout the transition.

Pricing of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles in Mixed-Traffic Networks

“…In the papers by Simoni et al ( 8 ), Mehr and Horowitz ( 9 ) and Tscharaktschiew and Evangelinos ( 11 ), CAVs are assumed to behave selfishly. Boffa et al ( 10 ) appears to be the only contribution so far that considered, for CAVs, private monopolist behavior also.…”

“…Mehr and Horowitz ( 9 ) consider marginal cost pricing at network level with both HDVs and CAVs taxed under undifferentiated and differentiated (between the two vehicle classes) schemes. Boffa et al ( 10 ) investigate marginal cost pricing in a stylized case of a connection with two lanes. They consider the selfish user scenario and a private monopolist scenario with CAVs only.…”

“…This study builds on the contribution by Boffa et al ( 10 ): the analysis is extended to networks of general topology with mixed HDV and CAV traffic, formulation of the full valid toll set is provided, and convergent algorithms for the mixed-behavior equilibrium and toll determination problems are provided and tested. The tools that are used include a mixed-behavior equilibrium model, a toll determination model, and algorithms for the respective computations.…”