Bottleneck congestion and residential location of heterogeneous commuters

Takayama, Yuki and Kuwahara, Masao (2017): Bottleneck congestion and residential location of heterogeneous commuters.

Abstract

This study examines the effects of bottleneck congestion and an optimal time-varying congestion toll on the spatial structure of cities. We develop a model in which heterogeneous commuters choose departure times from home and residential locations in a monocentric city with a bottleneck located between a central downtown and an adjacent suburb. We then demonstrate that commuters sort themselves temporally and spatially on the basis of their value of travel time and their flexibility. Furthermore, we reveal that introducing an optimal congestion toll alters the urban spatial structure. We further demonstrate using an example that congestion tolling can lead to urban sprawl, which helps rich commuters but hurts poor commuters.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: bottleneck congestion; residential location; congestion toll; urban sprawl
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D6 - Welfare Economics > D62 - Externalities; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R2 - Household Analysis > R21 - Housing Demand; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R4 - Transportation Economics > R41 - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion ; Travel Time ; Safety and Accidents ; Transportation Noise; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R4 - Transportation Economics > R48 - Government Pricing and Policy

References

Akamatsu, T. (2007) "Tradable network permits: A new scheme for the most efficient use of network capacity," mimeograph.

Akamatsu, T., Wada, K., and Hayashi, S. (2015) "The corridor problem with discrete multiple bottlenecks," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 81, No. 3, pp. 808-829.

Akamatsu, T., Fujishima, S., and Takayama, Y. (2017) "Discrete-space agglomeration models with social interactions: Multiplicity, stability, and continuous limit of equilibria," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Vol. 69, pp. 22-37.

Alonso, W. (1964) Location and Land Use: Harvard University Press.

Anas, A., Arnott, R., and Small, K. A. (1998) "Urban spatial structure," Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 1426-1464.

Anas, A. and Rhee, H.-J. (2007) "When are urban growth boundaries not second-best policies to congestion toll?," Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 61, No. 2, pp. 263-286.

Arnott, R. (1998) "Congestion tolling and urban spatial structure," Journal of Regional Science, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 495-504.

Arnott, R., dePalma, A., and Lindsey, R.(1990a) "Departure time and route choice for the morning commute," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 248, No. 3, pp. 209-228.

Arnott, R., de Palma, A., and Lindsey, R. (1990b) "Economics of a bottleneck," Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 111-130.

Arnott, R., de Palma, A., and Lindsey, R. (1992) "Route choice with heterogeneous drivers and group-specific congestion costs," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 71-102.

Arnott, R., de Palma, A., and Lindsey, R. (1993) "A structural model of peak-period congestion: A traffic bottleneck with elastic demand," American Economic Review, Vol. 83, No. 1, pp. 161-179.

Arnott, R., de Palma, A., and Lindsey, R. (1994) "The welfare effects of congestion tolls with heterogeneous commuters," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 139-161.

van den Berg, V. A. C. and Verhoef, E. T. (2011) "Winning or losing from dynamic bottleneck congestion pricing? The distributional effects of road pricing with heterogeneity in values of time and schedule delay," Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 95, No. 7-8, pp. 983-992.

Blanchet, A., Mossay, P., and Santambrogio, F. (2016) "Existence and uniqueness of equilibrium for a spatial model of social interactions," International Economic Review, Vol. 57, No. 1, pp. 31-60.

Brueckner, J. K. (2007) "Urban growth boundaries: An effective second-best remedy for unpriced traffic congestion?," Journal of Housing Economics, Vol. 16, No. 3-4, pp. 263-273.

Duranton, G. and Puga, D. (2015) "Urban land use," in Duranton, G., Henderson, J. V., and Strange, W. C. eds. Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Vol. 5: North Holland, pp. 405-465.

Fosgerau, M. and Engelson, L. (2011) "The value of travel time variance," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 1-8.

Fosgerau, M., Kim, J., and Ranjan, A. (2016) "Vickrey meets Alonso: Commute scheduling and congestion in a monocentric city," mimeograph.

Fosgerau, M. and Lindsey, R.(2013) "Trip-timing decisions with traffic incidents," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 764-782.

Fosgerau, M. and de Palma, A. (2012) "Congestion in a city with a central bottleneck," Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 71, No. 3, pp. 269-277.

Fosgerau, M. and Small, K. A. (2014) "Endogenous scheduling preferences and congestion," Working Paper, University of California at Irvine.

Fujita, M. (1989) Urban Economic Theory: Land Use and City Size: Cambridge University Press.

Fujita, M. and Thisse, J.-F. (2013) Economics of Agglomeration: Cities, Industrial Location, and Globalization: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition.

Glaeser, E. L., Kahn, M. E., and Rappaport, J. (2008) "Why do the poor live in cities? The role of public transportation," Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 63, No. 1, pp. 1-24.

Gubins, S. and Verhoef, E. T. (2014) "Dynamic bottleneck congestion and residential land use in the monocentric city," Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 80, pp. 51-61.

Hall, J. D. (2015) "Pareto improvements from lexus lanes: the effects of pricing a portion of the lanes on congested highways," University of Tronto Working Paper 548.

He, F., Yin, Y., Shirmohammadi, N., and Nie, Y. M. (2013) "Tradable credit schemes on networks with mixed equilibrium behaviors," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 57, pp. 47-65.

Hendrickson, C. and Kocur, G. (1981) "Schedule delay and departure time decisions in a deterministic model," Transportation Science, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 62-77.

Iryo, T. and Yoshii, T. (2007) "Equivalent optimization problem for finding equilibrium in the bottleneck model with departure time choices," in Heydecker, B. G. ed. Mathematics in Transport: Elsevier, pp. 231-244.

Joshi, K. K. and Kono, T. (2009) "Optimization of floor area ratio regulation in a growing city," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 502-511.

Kanemoto, Y. (1980) Theories of Urban Externalities: North-Holland.

Kono, T., Kaneko, T., and Morisugi, H. (2008) "Necessity of minimum floor area ratio regulation: A second-best policy," Annals of Regional Science, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 523-539.

Kono, T. and Joshi, K. K. (2012) "A new interpretation on the optimal density regulations: Closed and open city," Journal of Housing Economics, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 223-234.

Kuwahara, M. (1990) "Equilibrium queueing patterns at a two-tandem bottleneck during the morning peak," Transportation Science, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 217-229.

Laih, C.-H. (1994) "Queueing at a bottleneck with single- and multi-step tolls," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 197-208.

Laih, C.-H. (2004) "Effects of the optimal step toll scheme on equilibrium commuter behaviour," Applied Economics, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 59-81.

Lindsey, R. (2004) "Existence, uniqueness, and trip cost function properties of user equilibrium in the bottleneck model with multiple user classes," Transportation Science, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 293-314.

Lindsey, R., van den Berg, V. A. C., and Verhoef, E. T. (2012) "Step tolling with bottleneck queuing congestion," Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 72, No. 1, pp. 46-59.

Liu, Y., Nie, Y. M., and Hall, J. (2015) "A semi-analytical approach for solving the bottleneck model with general user heterogeneity," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 71, pp. 56-70.

McCann, P. (2013) Modern Urban and Regional Economics: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition.

Mills, E. S. (1967) "An aggregative model of resource allocation in a metropolitan area," American Economic Review, Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 197-210.

Mun, S.-i. and Yonekawa, M. (2006) "Flextime, traffic congestion and urban productivity," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 329-358.

Muth, R. F. (1969) Cities and Housing: University of Chicago Press.

Nie, Y. M. (2012) "Transaction costs and tradable mobility credits," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 189-203.

Nie, Y. M. and Yin, Y. (2013) "Managing rush hour travel choices with tradable credit scheme," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 50, pp. 1-19.

Peer, S. and Verhoef, E. T. (2013) "Equilibrium at a bottleneck when long-run and short-run scheduling preferences diverge," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 57, pp. 12-27.

Pines, D. and Kono, T. (2012) "FAR regulations and unpriced transport congestion," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Vol. 42, No. 6, pp. 931-937.

Small, K. A. (1982) "The scheduling of consumer activities: worktrips," American Economic Review, Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 467-479.

Takayama, Y. (2015) "Bottleneck congestion and distribution of work start times: The economics of staggered work hours revisited," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 81, No. 3, pp. 830-847.

Takayama, Y. and Kuwahara, M. (2016) "Bottleneck congestion and residential location of heterogeneous commuters," MPRA Paper, University Library of Munich, Germany, No. 68940.

Tseng, Y. Y. and Verhoef, E. T. (2008) "Value of time by time of day: A stated-preference study," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 42, pp. 607-618.

Verhoef, E. T., Nijkamp, P., and Rietveld, P. (1997) "Tradeable permits: Their potential in the regulation of road transport externalities," Environment and Planning B, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 527-548.

Vickrey, W. S. (1969) "Congestion theory and transport investment," American Economic Review, Vol. 59, No. 2, pp. 251-260.

Vickrey, W. S. (1973) "Pricing, metering, and efficiently using urban transportation facilities," Highway Research Record, Vol. 476, pp. 36-48.

Wada, K. and Akamatsu, T. (2013) "A hybrid implementation mechanism of tradable network permits system which obviates path enumeration: An auction mechanism with day-to-day capacity control," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Vol. 60, pp. 94-112.

Wheaton, W. C. (1998) "Land use and density in cities with congestion," Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 258-272.

Yang, H. and Wang, X. (2011) "Managing network mobility with tradable credits," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 580-594.