CONGESTION MANAGEMENT AND INFORMATION PROVISION IN RISKY AND CONNECTED TRANSPORTATION NETWORKS

Abstract

This dissertation is concerned with mitigating traffic congestion in transportation networks by strategically influencing travelers' routing behaviors with traffic information. As a user-friendly instrument, traffic information provision has been widely expected to guide travelers to make better decisions against recurrent and nonrecurrent congestions. In a connected environment with Connected Vehicle Systems and other Advanced Traveler Information Systems, travelers can acquire information from different platforms at different times and locations. First, this dissertation examines travelers' travel strategies and route choices in a two-route network under the joint implementation of pre-trip travel information provision and congestion pricing. By deriving the equilibria with and without information, we examine the welfare distributional effects across risk-averse travelers with heterogeneous values of time. Second, the dissertation proceeds to consider general networks where travelers can acquire information en-route other than before departures. This dissertation formulates travelers' information acquisition and routing behaviors in a mixed traffic flow of connected vehicles and regular vehicles. We investigate how to promote system optimal routing behaviors within the mixed traffic flow by applying anonymous congestion pricing schemes. Last, this dissertation further addresses a traffic manager's information design problem in the aforementioned two-route network, where rational inattentive travelers can acquire private information costly from commercial information providers aside from the traffic manager.