Frank's PhD Confirmation: Dynamic Congestion Pricing with Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram and Simulation-Based Dynamic Traffic Assignment

Congratulations to Frank for successfully passing his PhD confirmation on "Dynamic Congestion Pricing with MFD and Simulation-based DTA". Frank started his PhD at Monash University in 2015 under supervision of Dr. Meead Saberi, Prof. Majid Sarvi and Prof. Zhiyuan (Terry) Liu. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Nanjing Tech University, China in 2012 and his Master’s degree in transportation engineering from SEU-Monash Joint Graduate School in China in 2013.
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Abstract: Supply-oriented development of urban transportation, i.e. by road capacity expansion through large-scale construction, has been the traditional way of alleviating urban traffic congestion. However, due to limited urban space, this is not a sustainable solution anymore. Rather, demand-oriented techniques should be pursued, among which congestion pricing has been widely advocated as an effective tool in dealing with traffic congestion. An innovative solution has recently been introduced by combing congestion pricing with macroscopic traffic flow models, i.e. congestion pricing based on network fundamental diagram (NFD) or macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD). To better reflect traffic dynamics, the broad aim of this research is to develop an optimal MFD-based congestion pricing scheme using simulation-based dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) for a large-scale real-world network (Melbourne).