Informing the Placement of Cordon Lines to Optimize Impacts of Congestion Pricing

Status

In Progress

Project Timeline

August 5, 2024 - August 31, 2025

Principal Investigator

Areas of Expertise

Transportation Economics, Funding, & Finance

Campus(es)

UC Berkeley

Project Summary

San Francisco and Los Angeles plan to deploy congestion pricing. Their plans call for levying tolls on car travelers who cross cordon lines to enter a specific area of each city. Preliminary research suggests that the choice of where to place a cordon within a city may be the design factor that exerts greatest influence on the success of any pricing scheme in terms of shifting travel behavior and/or raising revenues.

This project builds upon previous research suggesting that optimal cordon placements can be approximated via a simple rule that could be applied in any real setting. Using traffic simulation models enhanced to emulate the particularities of cordon-based pricing, this project will demonstrate that using this rule to place cordons will maximize favorable modal shifts (e.g., move travelers from single-occupancy vehicles to transit or other share modes) and revenues raised; and minimize or nearly minimize vehicle miles travelled in a city. Simulations will be conducted on a variety of idealized regional configurations as well as for San Francisco, as a case study.