关键词:

城市交通, 空驶出租车, 多乘员车道, 交通均衡

Abstract:

To explore the impacts of the utilization of vacant taxis using HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes on traffic system, this paper investigates the spatial equilibrium of the taxi market with/without the access of vacant taxis to HOV lanes. It uses a combined variational inequality (VI) to describe the traffic system equilibrium built on the travel mode and route choice, and adopts the algorithm which combines the Gauss-Seidel decomposition technology with the MSA algorithm to solve the VI. The traveler can follow the Logit mode choice and user equilibrium on the network. The model and algorithm are applied to a numerical example, and proceed on the comparative static analysis by comparing the performances of the network with the various occupancy, taxi fleet-size, and the preliminary flag-fall price. The results show that allowing vacant taxis to use HOV lanes may cause the phenomenon similar to the Braess paradox and reduce social welfare, and the occurrence of this phenomenon depends on the parameters of the road network. Meanwhile, the effect of allowing vacant taxis to use HOV lanes is limited, which is basically caused by traffic flow distribution, while the oversaturation of HOV lanes rarely occurs. In addition, this paper also explores the impact of three variables, i.e., the average occupancy rate per unit vehicle, the number of taxis in the road network, and the starting price of taxis, on the policy of allowing vacant taxis to use HOV lanes.

Key words:

urban traffic, vacant taxi, high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane, traffic equilibrium