A travel demand management strategy: The downtown space reservation system

In this paper, a Travel Demand Management strategy known as the Downtown Space Reservation System (DSRS) is introduced. The purpose of this system is to facilitate the mitigation of traffic congestion in a cordon-based downtown area by requiring people who want to drive into this area to make reservations in advance. An integer programming formulation is provided to obtain the optimal mix of vehicles and trips that are characterized by a series of factors such as vehicle occupancy, departure time, and trip length with an objective of maximizing total system throughput and revenue. Based upon the optimal solution, an “intelligent” module is built using artificial neural networks that enables the transportation authority to make decisions in real time on whether to accept an incoming request. An example is provided that demonstrates that the solution of the “intelligent” module resembles the optimal solution with an acceptable error rate. Finally, implementation issues of the DSRS are addressed.