On 16th July, 2017, in Room A716 of the New Main Building, Dr. Zhiwei WANG, from Nanyang Technological University, was invited to make a lecture on “The discrete-time second-best dynamic road pricing scheme”. The lecture was hosted by professor Tian Qiong. More than 20 people attended, including professors and students from School of Economics and Management, Beihang university.
Congestion pricing is widely recognized as an efficient instrument for alleviating road congestion. Most of existing road pricing scheme are developed based on traffic equilibrium model. The equilibrium can be looked as a traffic state desired by traffic management authorities. However, when the traffic system has multiple equilibria if the initial traffic state falls beyond the attraction domain, it may not converge to the desired equilibrium under the pricing based on the traffic equilibrium through a day-to-day adjustment process. Dr. WANG developed a more practical second-best dynamic road pricing scheme implemented on a subset of links, which can drive the traffic evolution towards the desired second-best traffic user equilibrium state from any initial traffic state.
At the end of the report, the participants conducted in-depth discussions with Dr. Wang on related issues. He also shared his own research and work experience, and gave some useful advice to the attended students.
