Impact Of Congestion Pricing Policy Change On Mode Choice: The Case Of Tehran

Transportation demand management policies are among the most important ways to reduce traffic congestion in cities and make transport infrastructures more efficient. One of the important policies in this field is congestion pricing that has been considered by various researchers to estimate and predict its effects including modal shift. In the present study, the effects of a new pricing policy on the traffic area of Tehran city, namely the acquisition of hourly basis tolls from personal vehicles entering this area, are studied. In this regard, the stated preference information was received through in-person interviews from 1588 users of this city-wide area who use personal vehicles for traffic in the area. In order to model their behavior in the face of the new pricing policy (hourly basis), multiple logit model was used. According to the results of the calibrated models, following the implementation of the 2000-Tomans hourly scenario, about 22% of the people entering the area by personal vehicles are going to shift their traveling mode to other modes including public (metro / bus), taxi, snap, and motorcycle. Of this, about 12% of people prefer the public transportation and will increase the share of this mode on daily trips. The Traffic Estimator's Elasticity Analysis showed that with a 1% increase in the average cost of the traffic plan in the utility function of the alternatives to change the way of travelling and other changes (cancellation of travel, change of destination to outside the range, and travel deferring to the weekend), the probability of choosing these alternatives increases by 0.77% and 0.61%, respectively. Furthermore, based on the analysis of the marginal effects of the traffic plan price variable, with the increase of 1,000 Tomans to the average cost of the traffic plan in the utility function of alternatives to change the way of travel and other changes, the probability of choosing these alternatives increases by 0.013 and 0.005, respectively.