Dynamic Travel Permits Allocation Mechanism Based on Auction and Personal Trading Combination

Recently, urban population has been growing continuously, leading to increasing traffic congestion and significantly impacting our society. Some areas have tried to reduce the total vehicle amount by various measures, such as odd-and-even license plate restrictions. In this study, a different method was proposed to limit the number of vehicles using auction and personal trading. More specifically, a dynamic travel permit allocation mechanism was introduced to alleviate urban traffic congestion especially during rush hours, which could actively respond to time-series changes in the participant schedules. We evaluated the efficiency of the mechanism using a multi-agent simulation, during which two indicators were adopted: (1) traffic congestion, and (2) agent satisfaction score. The agent satisfaction score quantifies the degree of matching between the schedule of each agent with their acquisition status of the travel permits. We experimentally confirmed that the proposed method improves the agent satisfaction score while limiting the number of vehicles to decrease congestion.