Study the Effect of Fuel Price Changes on the Volume of Freight Traffic on the Road by Using System Dynamics Approach (Case Study: Iran)

The traffic systems are of complex economic systems include several variables and linear and non-linear feedback chains which are under influence of economic, traffic, social and environmental factors. The common traffic modeling approaches are not appropriate for evaluating and stimulating of performance of such systems. In this study, to examination of effects of fuel price changes on the volume of traffic on the roads of Iran an approach based on dynamic system is used to model Iran traffic system on the road. This dynamic model system, using statistical data from 2014 of Iran, by VENSIM PLE software and under fuel price increase rate scenarios for 5%, 15% and 20% during three short periods (5 years), medium period (10 years) and long period (20 years) is stimulated. The results of stimulation show that in such periods, the frequency of automobiles traffic on Iran roads has a linear growth and different petrol price increases have not any significant effect on the number of vehicles on Iran roads. Therefore, using pricing politics for fuel, merely to justify the volume of traffic on the roads of Iran, don’t seem have economic and logical bases.