Equity Effects of Congestion Pricing on Urban Road Resources Allocation

There is a big obstacle to bring congestion pricing into effect for the lack of public confidence on equity impacts. This paper analyzes the equity effects of congestion pricing from its impacts on urban road resources allocation. It sets forth the characteristics of urban road resources and the meaning of equity in urban road resources allocation, and then makes researches on how to measure the equity effects. On the basis of the resources occupation of urban roads in every mode, it uses Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients to show the changes before and after the implementation of urban road congestion pricing. In that way, the change of equity in road resources allocation brought by the urban road congestion pricing is found out, and the equity effects of urban road congestion pricing are quantitatively analyzed. Also, a sample case is introduced and the practical data are calculated to demonstrate that the urban road congestion pricing can improve the public equity of the urban road resources allocation.