Review the Effect of using Automated Vehicles on Congestion Toll Pricing

Autonomous vehicles as a cutting-edge technology that enables regular traffic by shorter headways, have the potential to revolutionize the future of transportation studies. Due to the unknown field study of autonomous vehicles' performance on traffic flow, codified regulations on interacting with these vehicles have not yet been defined. Therefore, this paper reviews the studies on the impact of autonomous vehicles on congestion toll pricing as one of the travel demand management (TDM) policies to express the possibility of recognizing the dimensions of impact in the form of specific advantages and disadvantages. The results show that with autonomous vehicles and considering their share of traffic flow, the issue of congestion toll pricing will be much different and more complex than before. This complexity stems from the definition of social welfare and the acceptability of balancing the supply of transportation facilities with the travel demand. In fact, by autonomous vehicles, the possibility of collecting tolls on selected roads as the first-best pricing could happen. Also, based on the findings, it can be inferred that when using high-volume autonomous vehicles, although the capacity is used more optimally, the amount of Vehicle-Kilometers Traveled (VKT) increases dramatically, and this makes the need to control the flow of autonomous vehicles. Therefore, in the case of using autonomous vehicles, the congestion toll pricing should be defined in terms of the distance traveled to manage the travel demand of individuals.