Urban congestion pricing based on relative comfort and its impact on carbon emissions

Congestion pricing policies are implemented with the goal of alleviating urban traffic congestion during morning and evening rush hours and thus improving urban efficiency. Therefore, designing an optimum congestion pricing scheme that ensures an efficient urban traffic system while reducing carbon emissions from urban traffic is an urgent issue to be solved. To this end, an urban congestion pricing model that accounts for relative comfort is established in this study to determine congestion price, which are subsequently optimized by calculating the corresponding carbon emissions from urban traffic. After a one-hour simulation analysis of the road network in some areas of Xi'an, it was found that when the congestion pricing is 7 yuan, the overall road network speed and carbon emissions are optimal, and the average road network speed increases from 29.64 km/h to 43.31 km /h, the carbon emission is reduced by 852.4 kg. This paper can provide references for formulating policies to alleviate traffic congestion and reduce carbon emissions for countries.