Congestion Pricing Model for Urban Congested Roads (Case Study: Sadr Elevated Highway)

In recent years, congestion pricing is applied as one of the main demand management methods in urban areas. Although, numerous studies had been performed in urban road networks, but only few of them is about link pricing in urban areas. Sadr elevated highway, recently built in Tehran, is the case study of this paper. This route which has many alternative routes (for example Sadr highway in level 0 elevation) has the potential for link pricing in Tehran. Due to this fact that currently there is no any pricing mechanism in this route, a stated preference method had been applied for defining the reaction of users to route pricing. Over 1100 samples were gathered and coded in a database. A binary logit model was applied for modeling the route choice behavior of users due to pricing. Results showed that using the route in peak hour cause to increase the willingness to pay. Users with mandatory trip goals, have more will to use faster routes. Also, results showed that users with more expensive cars and higher education level pay more for priced routes. Sensitivity analysis showed that if the pricing toll is going to be set on 2000 tomans, about 42 % of demand have the willingness to pay. With raising the cost, the willingness to pay tends to reduce significantly. For example, if the toll is set to 5000 tomans, 67 percents of total demand would tend to other alternatives.