Abstract:

Existing traffic demand management strategies， such as road pricing， parking restrictions， and tradable credits scheme， mostly focus on using punishment mechanisms to keep travelers away from certain transportation modes or time periods. However， due to the issues such as traveler aversion， inequity of charges and market settings， these measures are difficult to implement. The incentive-based traffic demand management （IBTDM） strategy adjusts the temporal-spatial distribution of travel demand through incentives， which is highly feasible in solving the potential problems such as traveler aversion and inequity of charges. Therefore， it is necessary to analyze how to formulate IBTDM strategy reasonably so that the government can effectively adjust the temporal-spatial distribution of travel demand.A differentiated incentive strategy to encourage green travel behaviors is analyzed by considering the scope of incentive objectives and different levels of incentives in a multi-mode transportation system. Given a one-to-one multi-modal transportation network， in which commuters can get to their destination by driving regular vehicles solely， sharing vehicles with others or taking bus mode， the effect of the strategy is analyzed based on the bottleneck model in scenarios where the ride-sharing services are provided by two suppliers with different incentive budgets.The results show that the proposed strategy can effectively guide commuters to the preferred travel mode through different parameter settings for the strategy. When there is no incentive budget limit， increasing the coefficient difference or incentive amount can reduce the number of vehicles traveling on roads and travel costs while the number of bus commuters shows different trends. When minimizing the travel cost with emission reduction constraint， the feasible range of the incentive amount and difference coefficient narrows， and is inversely proportional to the fixed budget value. Additionally， although there is no budget， the road congestion queue can be eliminated， and the temporal-spatial distribution of the travel demand can be adjusted by combining with a dynamic bottleneck toll.Through the implementation of differentiated incentive strategy that encourage green travel behavior， commuters can be reasonably guided towards designated transportation modes and effectively alleviate urban road congestion. A theoretical reference is provided for selecting incentive objectives and determining the incentive amounts in IBTDM strategy in a multi-modal travel scenario and help deepen the understanding of policies for multi-modal traffic demand management based on incentive mechanisms.

Key words: urban traffic, differentiated incentive, traffic demand management, green travel behaviors, bottleneck model