Pricing of Arterial Links of Urban Transportation Networks Using Bilevel Programming Problem

Road pricing strategy is considered not only as a suitable way to control demand، but also as a method for covering the costs of transportation systems. This article proposes a pricing method using a bi-level model and is applicable for large networks including several Origin-Destination (ODs) pairs and toll links. In the presented method، pricing concept or route toll is allocated only to some of the arterial links of urban transportation network. Since bilevel programming problems، particularly pricing in real networks with lots of links and nodes، are NP-hard، Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is used for solving the model. The real data of Tehran Traffic area is used to investigate probable effects of the presented method. The results indicate that، network traffic flow and users’ chosen routes are directly influenced by changing the toll rate.