Project number: MF-1.1c

Funding source: Volvo Research and Education Foundations

Performance period: 1/1/2014 to 12/31/2015

Project description

Researchers recognize both the impacts of road congestion on the performance of freight transport operations and the impacts of road congestion caused by freight vehicles on private passengers' travel times. However, it remains very complex to measure congestion at the scale of an urban area, because it requires traffic counts on a large portion of the road network. Moreover, the congestion impacts of private cars on the freight traffic have been rarely addressed in the literature. This paper presents a methodology allowing us to measure road congestion at an urban-level, using (macro) OD matrices and (micro) data for private passengers and freight vehicles in the case of the Paris Region (France). First, we develop one theoretical framework which enables us to express congestion functions of each traffic class (small or large vehicles) as well as the reciprocal influence each traffic class has on the other in terms of travel times. Then we present the empirical material used to test this framework. Building on our econometric results, we propose relationships expressing the travel times of each vehicle class as a function of similar and dissimilar types of vehicles' traffic. Future research will rely on these functions to calculate various marginal congestion costs.