Marginal cost pricing with a fixed error factor in traffic networks

Guni Sharon, Stephen D. Boyles, Shani Alkoby, Peter Stone

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

It is well known that charging marginal cost tolls (MCT) from self interested agents participating in a congestion game leads to optimal system performance, i.e., minimal total latency. However, it is not generally possible to calculate the correct marginal costs tolls precisely, and it is not known what the impact is of charging incorrect tolls. This uncertainty could lead to reluctance to adopt such schemes in practice. This paper studies the impact of charging MCT with some fixed factor error on the system's performance. We prove that under-estimating MCT results in a system performance that is at least as good as that obtained by not applying tolls at all. This result might encourage adoption of MCT schemes with conservative MCT estimations. Furthermore, we prove that no local extrema can exist in the function mapping the error value, r, to the system's performance, T(r). This result implies that accurately calibrating MCT for a given network can be done by identifying an extremum in T(r) which, consequently, must be the global optimum. Experimental results from simulating several large-scale, real-life traffic networks are presented and provide further support for our theoretical findings.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2019
PublisherInternational Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (IFAAMAS)
Pages1539-1546
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9781510892002
StatePublished - 2019
Externally publishedYes
Event18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2019 - Montreal, Canada
Duration: 13 May 201917 May 2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.5555/3306127

Publication series

NameProceedings of the International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS
Volume3
ISSN (Print)1548-8403
ISSN (Electronic)1558-2914

Conference

Conference18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2019
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal
Period13/05/1917/05/19
Internet address

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Congestion games
  • Flow optimization
  • Marginal-cost pricing
  • Routing games
  • Traffic flow

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