THE CATALYSTS AND COSTS OF CONGESTION
LSU researcher leading efforts on new approach to make the afternoon commute less chaotic

It makes us late for dinner with the family. It makes us feel nervous, frustrated, and angry. It makes us long for more traffic lanes and less drivers on the road. The culprit for all of these feelings and thoughts is, of course, traffic congestion.

Sudipta Sarangi, an assistant professor in LSU’s Department of Economics, is working on a solution to calm our nerves—without expanding roads. Spending more money to ease traffic congestion may be an idea of the past thanks to a new project recently funded by the National Science Foundation.

Sarangi is leading a team of investigators, which includes two Virginia Tech engineers and one Virginia Commonwealth University economist, looking into the social implications and rewards involved in traffic congestion and ease. The study is finding ways to minimize the tragedy of commons—a phenomenon that states when many in a community use a resource that no one owns, such as public highways, the resource becomes overused. Enter traffic.

“Everyone responds to incentives, so we are looking at what incentives will allow people to make different decisions, to take different routes to and from their destinations,” says Sarangi.

Using game theory—which states that outcomes depend on actions taken by a person or system—as a guide, the team will be able to consider the complete spectrum of choices individual drivers need to make on the roadways. One experimental aspect of the project focuses on what Sarangi calls dynamic congestion pricing. For example, most drivers may use Highway A, which has a $1 toll, to go home in the afternoon during rush hour. Studies will test what happens to traffic flow patterns if Highway A’s toll increases to $3.

“If tolls change during high-traffic patterns, some drivers will choose to use the higher toll highway, and others will find an alternate route to go home,” says Sarangi. “This will ultimately give drivers a less frustrating commute. By giving people incentives to take one route or the other, we can more evenly distribute traffic.”

Another concept the team is working on is called highway space inventory control, which would require drivers to pay to reserve driving space in advance for certain times of the day. Those without reservations would have to find an alternate route to their destinations.
There is no shortage of social and personal costs involved with sitting in traffic. Vehicle maintenance and high gas prices are draining the budgets of American families. Air and noise pollution continue to take their tolls on the environment, and loss of productivity can sometimes mean longer hours at the office. Socially, the more time spent sitting in traffic, the less time we spend with friends, colleagues, and family.

According to Sarangi, communities are in danger of becoming isolated if the costs of driving become uncontrollably high. Who would want to leave home and get in a snarl of traffic? Sarangi hopes the answer to that question will be “everyone,” and that his team’s project will ultimately alleviate traffic congestion.

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from Winter 2006 Issue