[sustran] PEAK PERIOD PRICING AND PEAK SPREADING POLICIES

[Virginia SAPKOTA - imm_staff]

My apology for cross posting.

I am a PhD student at the University of Western Australia.  I am on my
first year of study, and planning to undertake a research into congestion
pricing.  Specifically, I am thinking of examining the joint effect of peak
period pricing and peak spreading policies such as flexible work hours.  

My interest to model the joint effect of pricing is that the flextime
arrangements which are commonly practiced here in Australian cities, I
thought, might have significant effect on the price elasticity of peak
period commuters.  By ignoring flextime, the tradeoff between travel time
cost and the penalty to arrive late at work, might result in setting a
relatively higher toll.  If the schedule delay cost is high, then a higher
toll is required to shift commuters to change their schedule outside the
peak.  However, with flextime available (albeit not to all peak travellers)
maybe at a lower toll commuters will already change time of departure since
it will not cost them to do so. 

I would greatly appreciate comments, as well as relevant studies and
references,  about my intended research problem.  



Thanking you in anticipation.


Yours sincerely



Virginia Sapkota
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Virginia Sapkota            	  	 Email:  vsapkota at ecel.uwa.edu.au
PhD Student                     		 Phone:  +61 8 9380 3195
Dept of Information Management          Fax:    +61 8 9380 1004   
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