Road pricing mechanisms: a game theoretic and multi-level approach

By 2050, it is expected that more than 9 billion people will be living on Earth. Development will reach to many places on Earth, demand for a better life will rise, car/vehicle ownership will increase, leading to high demand for road capacities and infrastructures, yet supply for these road capacities and infrastructures is not going to increase in the same rate as their demand. Further, this increase in vehicle ownership will escalate the traffic externalities such as congestion, emission, noise and so on. Due to financial, geographical, and political limitations, and the fact that even the expansion of the existing infrastructure may not lead to efficient use of transportation networks, it is envisaged that road pricing seems a viable option for achieving a more efficient use of the existing infrastructure. With all its potentials, road pricing has not gained all the supports it needed, mainly due to how the pricing schemes are developed and perceived by stakeholders and road users. We developed models for road pricing schemes taking into account the (usually) conflicting interests of various stakeholders and the road users, and all traffic externalities. For a just and acceptable road pricing scheme, we developed a novel idea from the concept of Nash equilibrium from game theory in the form of multi-stakeholder and multi-objective problems. We found that even in simple practical cases, that Nash equilibrium may not exist among the actors. This means that point of consensus might not be reached among stakeholders, an indication why talks on the adoption of road pricing have failed in many countries. To tackle this problem once and for all, we developed a mechanism that ensures that the point of consensus is reached among the stakeholders. The mechanism further ensures that the scheme adopted by these stakeholders is optimal for the society. To further address the issues of fairness and equity, and complications resulting from a link or kilometre-based charges, we developed a zone-based pricing scheme called an origin-destination based road pricing scheme. The scheme ensures efficient use of the road infrastructure by charging road users based on their origin and destination