Departure Times in Y-Shaped Traffic Networks with Multiple Bottlenecks

Abstract

We study the departure time decisions of commuters traversing a traffic network with the goal of arriving at a common destination at a specified time. There are costs associated with arriving either too early or too late, and with delays experienced at bottlenecks. Our main hypothesis, based on the Nash equilibrium distribution of departure times, implies that, for certain parameter values, expanding the capacity of an upstream bottleneck can increase the total travel costs in the network. We report the results of a large-group laboratory experiment, which are strongly supportive of this counterintuitive hypothesis, and we discuss the implications. (JEL D85, R41)

Stochastic bottleneck capacity, merging traffic and morning commute

“…Lago and Daganzo (2007) adopted a similar Y-shaped highway corridor to study the spillovers of merging traffic. Daniel et al (2009) conducted a behavioural experiment in a controlled environment with human subjects taking part in their departure time choice in a setting similar to that of Arnott et al (1993b) and confirmed the theoretical bottleneck paradox by laboratory behaviour. Based on the perspective of the deterministic settings, however, all existing studies assumed a fixed capacity at the downstream bottleneck.…”

“…Integrate morning and evening peaks in a day trip de Palma and Lindsey, 2002;Zhang et al, 2005 Modal split A separated transit mode is parallel to a highway with a bottleneck Tabuchi, 1993;Huang, 2000 Consecutive bottlenecks Commuters may pass one or two bottlenecks during the commuting trip Kuwahara, 1990;Arnott et al, 1993b;Lago and Daganzo 2007;Daniel et al, 2009 Similar to Daniels et al (2009), in this study, we allow for schedule delay early as well as schedule delay late (with higher costs) to the common destination. However, compared Our objective is to formulate the departure time choice with stochastic capacity under these two different merging strategies, and to investigate any capacity paradox with dynamic user response that may occur.…”

“…This means that commuters from group 1 can arrive early or late under the stochastic capacity assumption. Daniel et al (2009) found that, under deterministic capacity, commuters for group 1 can only arrive early. Furthermore, for group 2 traffic in Figure 7(b), we note that the SDE and SDL curves cross at a point where their costs are non zero and the travel time cost at the crossing point does not reach the mean trip cost.…”

Does Time Pressure Impair Performance? An Experiment on Queueing Behavior

“…When it is variable, the aggregate behavior diverges and results in a pareto superior outcome. Another study that provides evidence of convergence to the mixed-strategy equilibrium at an aggregate level when arrival times are endogenous is Daniel et al (2009).…”

Pareto-improving social optimal pricing schemes based on bottleneck permits for managing congestion at a merging section

“…The paradox means that decreasing inflows, for example by ramp metering, can be efficient to decreasing social cost by departure time choice as well as increase of bottleneck capacity at the merge point. Daniel et al (2009) conducted a laboratory experiment and replicated the bottleneck paradox, considering with schedule delay as well as schedule early. Xiao et al (2014) studied the Y-shaped network under a stochastic setting.…”