Integrated modeling framework for leasing urban roads: A case study of Fresno, California

Next Generations of Road Pricing: Social Welfare Enhancing

“…practice, profit-making RPs have been implemented on congested urban roads as well [15]. To follow the revenue-generation objective, operators/owners generally set high toll rates to maximize their profits (revenues minus costs) [16]. Revenues from this sort of RPs are usually dedicated to roadway projects, and in many cases should be used only on the same toll road.…”

“…The literature about private road pricing is very slight relative to that of congestion pricing, although the practice of private road pricing is no less prevalent than that of congestion pricing, especially in the U.S. Theoretical network modeling of private road pricing has analyzed the effects of duopoly and monopoly structures [16,55,56], the effects of traffic diversion to secondary roads [57], the interrelationships between pricing, capacity, and financing/investment [56,58], and impacts of alternative privatization structures and regulations [59][60][61].…”

“…Transportation practitioners should be aware of the social welfare decrease of RPs when some users decide not to travel because of higher travel costs associated with charging tolls [16]. Note that the social welfare change should be calculated based on the net effects on users (considering both those users who decide not to travel and the new users who decide to travel after pricing).…”

Policy lessons for regulating public–private partnership tolling schemes in urban environments

“…We rely on the basic mathematical approach developed in previous studies and only provide a brief description of four major problems as below: modified traffic assignment (Rouhani and Niemeier, 2011), profit maximization (Rouhani et al, 2013), general system cost minimization (Rouhani and Niemeier, 2014a), and spatial variation in tolls (Rouhani and Niemeier, 2014b).…”

“…Dimitriou et al (2009) optimization of capacity investments and toll charges, examining practical issues such as the regulation of tolls on privately-operated highways. Rouhani et al (2013) used demand analysis and game theory concepts to model the effects of including several concession projects on a number of system performance measures.…”