This paper develops a continuous time - continuous place model of road traffic congestion, based on car-following theory. The model fully integrates two archetype representations of traffic congestion technology, namely "flow congestion" and "vertical queueing" models. Because a closed-form analytical solution of the formal model does not exist, its behaviour is explored in a numerical exercise. In a setting with endogenous departure time choice and with a bottleneck halfway along the route, it is shown that "hypercongestion" can arise as a dynamic "transitional and local" equilibrium phenomenon. Dynamic toll schedules are explored. It is found that a toll rule based on an intuitive dynamic and space-varying generalization of the standard Pigouvian tax rule can hardly be improved upon. A naive application of a toll schedule based on Vickrey's bottleneck model, in contrast, performs much worse and actually even reduces welfare. For the covering abstract see ITRD E124693.
Samenvatting