This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
This Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project will develop dynamic resource allocation models for transportation systems. The focus will be on answering the question as to how should pricing schemes be developed for transportation networks to align individual incentives with socially optimal use of the network. Despite a tremendous amount of attention to transportation network pricing and management, the most widely-used models for traffic equilibrium remain static. The shift to intelligent transportation systems necessitates a new class of traffic models, where dynamic behavior is a first order modeling requirement. This EAGER project will develop tractable pricing schemes for efficient dynamic resource allocation in intelligent transportation systems.
Recent innovations in information technology have opened the door to a new frontier of potential research in transportation systems. Information technology enables drivers to obtain real-time updates on traffic conditions, as well as to reconfigure their route choices on the fly. On the other hand, the same information technology options enable a new breed of networked control for transportation systems. By providing intelligent feedback to drivers, transportation system designers hope to control drivers? individual decisions and encourage harmonious and efficient overall use of the roadways.
