Optimal Policies for Reducing Congestion of Major Commuting Arteries in a Growing Urbanized Area

Abstract

In this paper we develop a dynamic disequilibrium model characterizing the changing states of system capacity and traffic volume for a number of major commuting artenes in an urban highway system. This model may be used to solve the planning problem of determining how limited new construction and traffic control measures may be combined to reduce dnve-alone commut ing and other drive-alone travel at peak times in an urbanized area where growth and change are ongoing. We derive the set of conditions that characterize the optimal control solution to the problem, discuss how the approach suggested can be operationalized, and use a small empirical example to demonstrate the approach's feasibility.