Traffic managements for household travels in congested morning commute

• We investigate the traffic managements for household travels in morning commute.
• We extend the standard Vickrey’s bottleneck model to consider household commute.
• We analyse one step toll to best manage the morning commute with household travels.
• Optimal setting of school-work start time difference is determined.
• An alternative tradable credit scheme is proposed to manage household travels.

Due to the high car ownership cost or car ownership restrictions in many major cities, household travels, which include multiple trips for all the household members, become very common. One typical household travel can be observed as the consecutive school trip and work trip, which sends the traveler’s children to school first and then drive to their workplaces. In this paper, we analyse the departure time choice of the household travels and the equilibrium trip scheduling, i.e., extending the standard Vickrey’s bottleneck model from work commute with one single preferred arrival time (work start time) to household commute with two consecutive preferred arrival times (school start time and work start time). Then, we investigate one step toll in peak hour window to best manage the morning commute of household travels and analyse the impact of the school-work start time difference on individual cost, social cost and traffic managements, so that we can optimally set the school-work start time difference to minimize the total travel cost. In addition, an alternative tradable credit scheme is designed to manage the morning commute as a replacement of the road toll scheme.