Mitigating Traffic Congestion Induced by Transportation Network Companies

Mitigating Traffic Congestion Induced by Transportation Network Companies

Author: Kenan Zhang

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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This paper analyzes and evaluates several policies aiming to mitigate the congestion effect a Transportation Network Company (TNC) brings to bear on an idealized city that contains a dense central core surrounded by a larger periphery. The TNC offers both solo and pooling e-hail services to the users of public transport. We develop a spatial market equilibrium model over two building blocks: an aggregate congestion model describing the traffic impact of TNC operations on all travelers in the city, including private motorists, and a matching model estimating the TNC's level of service based on the interactions between riders and TNC drivers. Based on the equilibrium model, we formulate and propose solution algorithms to the optimal pricing problem, in which the TNC seeks to optimize its profit or social welfare subject to the extra costs and/or constraints imposed by the congestion mitigation policies. Three congestion mitigation policies are implemented in this study: (i) a trip-based policy that charges a congestion fee on each solo trip starting or ending in the city center; (ii) a cordon-based policy that charges TNC vehicles entering the city center with zero or one passenger; and (iii) a cruising cap policy that requires the TNC to maintain the fleet utilization ratio in the city center above a threshold. Based on a case study of Chicago, we find TNC operations may have a significant congestion effect. Failing to anticipate this effect in the pricing problem leads to sub-optimal decisions that worsen traffic congestion and hurt the TNC's profitability. Of the three policies, the trip-based policy delivers the best performance. It reduces traffic congestion modestly, keeps the TNC's level of service almost intact, and improves overall social welfare substantially. The cruising cap policy benefits private motorists, thanks to the extra congestion relief it brings about. However, because other stakeholders together suffer a much greater loss, its net impact on social welfare is negative. Paradoxically, the policy could worsen the very traffic conditions in the city center that it is designed to improve.


The Morality of Urban Mobility

The Morality of Urban Mobility

Author: Shane Epting

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-06-18

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1786608219

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Cities’ transportation systems affect people, ecosystems, and future generations, and they increase tensions between historical preservation, social justice concerns, and future needs. In turn, all of these factors deserve consideration, but not equally. A just and moral way forward must prioritize values in how we give preference in planning decisions. Shane Epting illustrates that the problem of “moral prioritization” rests at the heart of these problems. To overcome such challenges, he develops a multitiered assessment system that shows how to evaluate complicated affairs in urban mobility. This book brings philosophical underpinnings of public works into full view, showing how the love of wisdom benefits the ongoing and future transportation issues of our increasingly urbanized world.


Measuring Transportation Network Performance

Measuring Transportation Network Performance

Author: Cambridge Systematics

Publisher: Transportation Research Board

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 87

ISBN-13: 0309154928

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This guidebook provides methods for integrating performance measures from individual transportation modes and multiple jurisdictions and for developing new measures, if needed, to monitor transportation network performance. These network performance measures can be used to improve system management, planning, and investment decisions and can be applied to various scenarios. The guidebook should be of immediate use to practitioners in state, regional, or local governments; specially designated authorities; or those in the private sector who are responsible for measuring, operating, and investing in the performance of multimodal and/or multijurisdictional transportation networks.


Handbook on Smart Growth

Handbook on Smart Growth

Author: Knaap, Gerrit-Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2022-07-08

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1789904692

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This timely Research Handbook examines the evolution of smart growth over the past three decades, mapping the trajectory from its original principles to its position as an important paradigm in urban planning today. Critically analysing the original concept of smart growth and how it has been embedded in state and local plans, contributions from top scholars in the field illustrate what smart growth has accomplished since its conception, as well as to what extent it has achieved its goals.


The Impact of Transportation Network Companies on Urban Transportation Systems

The Impact of Transportation Network Companies on Urban Transportation Systems

Author: Christopher Alexander Bischak

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13:

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This study uses a mixed-methods approach to investigate how Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) are impacting urban transportation systems. First, using survey and National Household Travel Survey data this study seeks to understand if TNCs are inducing travel demand. Second, using survey data this study analyzes what people value in regards to TNCs. Overall this study found that most people are using TNCs for occasional, weekend travel. For some portion of users TNCs may be inducing travel demand. This study also finds that most users value the convenience of TNCs. These findings imply that TNCs are not transforming urban transportation but are acting as supplemental transportation services


Road to Nowhere

Road to Nowhere

Author: Paris Marx

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2022-07-05

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1839765917

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How to build a transportation system to provide mobility for all Road to Nowhere exposes the flaws in Silicon Valley’s vision of the future: ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft to take us anywhere; electric cars to make them ‘green’; and automation to ensure transport is cheap and ubiquitous. Such promises are implausible and potentially dangerous. As Paris Marx shows, these technological visions are a threat to our ideas of what a society should be. Electric cars are not a silver bullet for sustainability, and autonomous vehicles won’t guarantee road safety. There will not be underground tunnels to eliminate traffic congestion, and micromobility services will not replace car travel any sooner than we will see the arrival of the long-awaited flying car. In response, Marx offers a vision for a more collective way of organizing transportation systems that considers the needs of poor, marginalized, and vulnerable people. The book argues that rethinking mobility can be the first step in a broader reimagining of how we design and live in our future cities. We must create streets that allow for social interaction and conviviality. We need reasons to get out of our cars and to use public means of transit determined by community needs rather than algorithmic control. Such decisions should be guided by the search for quality of life rather than for profit.


Three Revolutions

Three Revolutions

Author: Daniel Sperling

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2018-03

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 161091905X

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Front Cover -- About Island Press -- Subscribe -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Will the Transportation Revolutions Improve Our Lives-- or Make Them Worse? -- 2. Electric Vehicles: Approaching the Tipping Point -- 3. Shared Mobility: The Potential of Ridehailing and Pooling -- 4. Vehicle Automation: Our Best Shot at a Transportation Do-Over? -- 5. Upgrading Transit for the Twenty-First Century -- 6. Bridging the Gap between Mobility Haves and Have-Nots -- 7. Remaking the Auto Industry -- 8. The Dark Horse: Will China Win the Electric, Automated, Shared Mobility Race? -- Epilogue -- Notes -- About the Contributors -- Index -- IP Board of Directors


Between Public and Private Mobility

Between Public and Private Mobility

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2016-03

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780309369640

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"TRB Special Report 319 analyzes the ways that innovative transportation services--including ridesharing, carsharing, bikesharing, and microtransit--are changing mobility for millions of travelers. Such services could reduce congestion and emissions from surface transportation if regulated wisely to encourage concurrent, instead of sequential, ridesharing. Rapidly growing transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft, however, are disrupting conventional taxi and limousine services and are raising policy challenges related to personal security and public safety, insurance requirements, employment and labor issues, and accessibility and equity. The committee's report offers guidance to state and local officials responsible for policy setting and regulation of for-hire transportation services in each of these areas. The report also addresses the need for greater consistency in regulations across jurisdictions and calls for TNCs to share more information about the volume, the frequency, and the types of trips they are providing, to allow for informed regulation and planning of transportation services"--provided by publisher.