Reservation scheme for congestion management during morning commute: Considering noncompliance
Seminar Presentation @ Future Cities Lab (Centrale Pékin, Beihang University Beijing and Laboratoire Génie Industriel, CentraleSupélec, Université Paris-Saclay) - Seminar Series 2025/2026
Abstract
Noncompliance — the failure of commuters to travel within their reserved time interval — poses a fundamental challenge to reservation-based travel demand management (TDM) schemes that rely on precise supply–demand matching. We develop an analytical framework for a reservation scheme that systematically conceptualizes and incorporates noncompliance into both scheme design and equilibrium analysis. The authority divides the morning peak into a shoulder–central–shoulder interval structure and distributes quotas accordingly; the noncompliance probability is formulated as a design-sensitive function of the time-interval structure, establishing a principled link between interval design and noncompliance behavior. Three equilibria are derived hierarchically — the departure time equilibrium (within each interval), the rescheduling equilibrium (across intervals following noncompliance), and the long-term equilibrium (across the implementation cycle) — and their properties are characterized analytically. Numerical analyses reveal that, while noncompliance generally exacerbates system and travel time costs, this adverse effect can be fully neutralized through appropriate time interval division, which guarantees the proposed scheme’s superiority over the laissez-faire case at any noncompliance level. Counterintuitively, noncompliance improves system performance in certain extreme scenarios. Although noncompliance increases total schedule delay costs, the improvement in travel time costs fully offsets this disadvantage, confirming the scheme’s overall effectiveness. We provide tailored policy design insights for two distinct managerial objectives: minimizing system cost and ensuring long-term fairness. Furthermore, the analytical insights regarding noncompliance could serve as a methodological reference for broader capacity-constrained reservation systems.
Details
- Presentation: Seminar Presentation
- Event: Future Cities Lab Seminar Series 2025/2026
- Date: Apr. 2026
- Location: Online