Dynamic Stackelberg equilibrium congestion pricing

uThis paper considers the problem of dynamic congestion pricing that determines optimal time-varying tolls for a prespecified subset of arcs with bottleneck on a congested general traffic network. A two-person nonzero-sum dynamic Stackelberg game model is formulated with the assumption that the underlying information structure is open loop. Characteristics of the Stackelberg equilibrium solution are analyzed. The Hooke-Jeeves algorithm that obviates an evaluation of the gradient vector of the objective function is presented with a numerical example. The paper concludes with its future extensions. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.