Articles in Peer Reviewed Conference Proceedings
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- Geroliminis, Nikolas and David Levinson (2009)
Cordon Pricing Consistent with the Physics of Overcrowding.
This paper describes the modeling of recurring congestion in a network. It is shown that the standard
economic models of marginal cost cannot describe precisely traffic congestion in networks during time-dependent
conditions. Following a macroscopic traffic approach, we describe the equilibrium solution for a congested network
in the no-toll case. A dynamic model of cordon-based congestion pricing (such as for the morning commute) for
networks is developed consistent with the physics of traffic. The paper combines Vickrey’s theory with a
macroscopic traffic model, which is readily observable with existing monitoring technologies. The paper also
examines some policy implications of the cordon-based pricing to treat equity and reliability issues, i.e. in what
mobility level a city should choose to operate. An application of the model in a downtown area shows that these
schemes can improve mobility and relieve congestion in cities.
Keywords: congestion pricing, traffic models, macroscopic fundamental diagram
Presented at the Eighteenth International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory, Hong Kong, July 2009. Published in Transportation and Traffic Theory 2009: Golden Jubilee. (ed. William H. K. Lam, S. C. Wong and Hong K. Lo) pp. 219--240. Springer. [doi]
- Huang, Arthur and David Levinson (2009)
Retail Location Choice with Complementary Goods: An Agent-based Model.
This paper models the emergence of retail clusters on a supply chain network comprised of suppliers, retailers, and consumers. Firstly, an agent-based model is proposed to investigate retail location distribution in a market of two complementary goods. The methodology controls for supplier locales and unit sales prices of retailers and suppliers, and a consumer’s willingness to patronize a retailer depends on the total travel distance of buying both goods. On a circle comprised of discrete locations, retailers play a non-cooperative game of location choice to maximize individual profits. Our findings suggest that the probability distribution of the number of clusters in equilibrium follows power law and that hierarchical distribution patterns are much more likely to occur than the spread-out ones. In addition, retailers of complementary goods tend to co-locate at supplier locales. Sensitivity tests on the number of retailers are also performed. Secondly, based on the County Business Patterns (CBP) data of Minneapolis-St. Paul from US Census 2000 database, we find that the number of clothing stores and the distribution of food stores at the zip code level follows power-law distribution.
JEL code: R30, L22
Keywords: clustering, agent-based model, location choice, power-law distribution
pattern, retailing
in Complex Sciences: First International Conference, Complex 2009, Shanghai, China, February 23-25, 2009. Revised Papers, Part 1. (Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics, and Telecommunications Enginering) (ed. Jie Zhou).
[doi]
- Levinson, David, Feng Xie, and Shanjiang Zhu (2007).
The Co-Evolution of Land Use and Road Networks.
This paper explores the co-evolution of land use and transportation, which is a poorly understood field despite progress in studying each separately. Our study models the co-evolution of land use and transportation network as a bottom-up process by which re-location of activities and expansion of roads are driven by interdependent decisions of individual businesses, workers, and road owners according to simple decision rules. The model was kept simple to best illustrate collective spatial patterns of land use distribution without conflating factors. The sensitivity of these patterns is also discussed. A Simulator of Integrated Growth of Networks And Land-use (SIGNAL) is developed to implement these decentralized decision making processes, in which the Gini index and equivalent radius were computed to describe and track down the spatial patterns of space and network. Simulation experiments were conducted to explore the evolution of land use patterns in the context of the coevolution of land use and road networks. Experimental results demonstrate that initially flat land uses become more concentrated while initially concentrated land uses become less so, and they tend to converge on the same hierarchical distribution, suggesting that a stable hierarchical distribution of land use may emerge from different initial conditions. Experiments also reveal that the concentration of land use is reinforced by the differentiation of roads.
Keywords: Network growth,land use, road network, evolution, self-organization
Presented at the Seventeenth International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory at Imperial College, London, July 2007. Published in Transportation and Traffic Theory 2007 (ed. Richard E. Allsop, Michael G. H. Bell, and Benjamin Heydecker) Emerald Group Pub Ltd. pp. 839-859.
(Earlier version presented at the North American Regional Science Conference, Toronto, Ontario, November 2006)
2003
2002
- Zhang, Lei and David Levinson (2002)
Estimation of Demand Response to Ramp Metering.
Ramp meters in the Twin Cities were turned off for 8 weeks in the Fall of 2000. Previous research has assumed demand to be fixed when analyzing ITS technologies, however analysis of this ramp metering shut down experiment, using traffic count data from freeway loop detectors, suggests otherwise: for discretionary trips (non-work trips), the presence of ramp meters encourages people to defer short non-work trips, which then take place during unmetered times. Similarly, the absence of ramp meters discourages long peak-period non-work trips, which are deferred to off-peak times. The effects of ramp metering on non-discretionary demand (work trips) are also reflected by the spreading of the peaks. The method of using freeway traffic count data to estimate demand shifts developed in this paper can also be applied to other freeway demand analyses.
Keywords: Ramp Meters, Elastic Demand, Non-work Trips, Twin Cities Ramp Meter Experiment.
p. 674-681 Proceedings of International Conference on Traffic and Transportation
Studies held in Guilin, China July 2002, ASCE Washington DC. [presentations]
- Zou, Xi and David Levinson (2002)
Evaluation of Impacts of Adaptive Cruise Control on Mixed Traffic Flow.
This paper addresses the impacts of Adaptive (Intelligent) Cruise Control (ACC) laws on traffic flow. Semi-automated vehicles, such as ACC Vehicles, with the capability to automatically follow each other in the same lane, will coexist with manually driven vehicles on the existing roadway system before they become universal. This mixed fleet scenario creates new capacity and safety issues. In this paper, simulation results of various mixed fleet scenarios under different ACC laws are presented. Explicit comparison of two ACC laws, Constant Time Headway (CTH) and Variable Time Headway (VTH), are based on these results. It is found that the latter one has better performance in terms of capacity and stability of traffic. Throughput increases with the proportion of CTH vehicles when flow is below capacity conditions. But above capacity, speed variability increases and speed drops with the CTH traffic compared with manual traffic, while the VTH traffic always performs better.. p. 762-779 Proceedings of International Conference on Traffic and Transportation Studies held in Guilin, China July 2002, ASCE Washington DC. [presentations]
- Levinson, David and Atif Sheikh (2002)
Traffic Equilibration: The Case of the Twin Cities Ramp Meter Shut Off.
In Fall 2000, more than 430 ramp meters in the Twin Cities metropolitan area were shut down in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the metering system. This shutdown disturbed normal traffic patterns and thus traffic equilibrium. The purpose of our research is to examine how long it takes to establish a new equilibrium after a shock to the system, and thus establish the basis for how long these traffic studies should be carried out, as transportation analysts are generally concerned with comparing two equilibrium conditions. The initial results contradict our hypothesis that as the number of weeks since the shutdown increases, the week-to-week change in volume decreases. In fact our results show that not only are the week-to-week changes in volume is greater for shutdown case than for pre-shutdown case, those changes are rising as the experiment proceeded. More research is needed to examine the question of whether and how equilibria form, and we need to examine longer time slices for analysis to consider alternative definitions of equilibria.
Keywords: equilibrium, ramp metering, traffic flow, travel time., p. 580-587 Proceedings of International Conference on Traffic and Transportation Studies held in Guilin, China July 2002, ASCE Washington DC.
2001
2000
- Levinson, David (2000)
Monitoring Infrastructure Capacity.
This paper examines the issues around monitoring of the capacity of public sector infrastructure to absorb land development.This paper first introduces Montgomery County¹s growth management system. It then offers two theories to justify monitoring infrastructure utilization for the purposes of establishing development capacity. The first, drawn from ecology is based on the notion of environmental carrying capacity. The second, from economics, employs the notion of externalities. However, neither of these directly translates to policy. The pragmatic position of establishing measures of effectiveness is then raised. These indicators must be situated within a decision framework. Because of the local and unique nature of projects, general rules will fail to provide efficient solutions. Thus, a more holistic evaluation framework is called for. Finally, some uses of the infrastructure capacity data in the context of land development are presented, with a focus on linking the financing of infrastructure with development approvals. p. 165-181 Land Market Monitoring for Smart Urban Growth Proceedings of Conference on Land Supply and Infrastructure Capacity Monitoring for Smart Urban Growth, Sponsored by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development March 30 to April 1, 2000, Cambridge, Massachusetts. [presentation]
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