A Continuous Transportation Network Design Problem with the Consideration of Road Congestion Charging

This paper proposes a biobjective continuous transportation network design problem concerning road congestion charging with the consideration of speed limit. The efficiency of the traffic network and the reduction of pollution in the network environment are improved by designing a reasonable road capacity enhancement and speed limit strategy. A biobjective bilevel programming model is developed to formulate the proposed network design problem. The first target of the upper problem is the optimization of road charging efficiency, and the other target is the total cost of vehicle emissions; these objectives are required to devise the optimal road capacity enhancement scheme, speed limiting schemes for different time periods, and the road pricing scheme. The lower-level problem involving travellers’ route choice behaviours uses stochastic user equilibrium (SUE) theory. Based on the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm, which is applied to solve the bilevel programming model, a numerical example is developed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm. The results show that the implementation of congestion charging measures on the congested road sections would help to alleviate road congestion in the transportation network, effectively save transportation infrastructure investment and limited urban land resources, increase fiscal revenue, and open up new sources of funds for urban infrastructure construction