Congestion in the bathtub

Abstract

This paper presents a bathtub model of downtown traffic congestion thataccounts for hypercongestion and for the fact that people drive differentdistances. The findings stand in sharp contrast to the prevailing wisdomthat builds on the Vickrey bottleneck model. Holding travel demand constant,the model shows, in a leading case, that a toll rate of zero is welfareoptimal among a wide class of time-varying tolls.