A genetic algorithm based approach to optimal toll level and location problems

The derivative based approach to solve the optimal toll problem is demonstrated in this paper for a medium scale network. It is shown that although the method works for most small problems with only a few links tolled, it fails to “converge” for larger scale problems. This failure led to the development of an alternative genetic algorithm (GA) based approach for finding optimal toll levels for a given set of chargeable links. A variation on the GA based approach is used to identify the best toll locations making use of “location indices” suggested by Verhoef (2002).