Design of large scale nudge engines
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Congestion is a widespread problem in modern urban transportation networks; hundreds of billions of dollars are lost each year due to wasted time, extra fuel consumption, traffic accidents, etc. A significant fraction of these losses is due to peak-hour congestion on road networks, which occurs when the demand for transport exceeds capacity over a short time period each day. In this thesis, we explore the feasibility of reducing peak-hour road traffic congestion using incentives to shift drivers' commute times. We first discuss a practical implementation of such an incentive program — CAPRI (Congestion And Parking Relief Incentives). This program aimed to reduce peak-hour vehicular traffic into and out of Stanford University. Commuters who sign up for CAPRI earn points for the "good trips" they make, and these points can be redeemed for rewards (both monetary and in-kind). CAPRI also includes the capability to personalize incentives based on users' historical behavior. To complement the implementation, we develop a theoretical model for optimally reducing the cost of peak-hour congestion with targeted incentives. We study the evolution of congestion on a highway under time-varying demands using fluid models of traffic flow. We then examine the effect of shifting users' commute times on congestion. We show that ideas from the theory of optimal transport of measures can be used to develop cost-effective incentive schemes to reduce congestion. Specifically, we show that the "cost of congestion" and the "cost of nudging" are closely related to the Wasserstein distance between measures. We use this relationship to formulate linear programming problems to compute personalized recommendations and incentives to nudge drivers to the off-peak hour. We find that the resultant reduction in the cost of congestion is significant and that it helps to prioritize commuters for nudging based on their origin and destination.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Mandayam Nayaka, Chinmoy Venkatesh |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Electrical Engineering. |
| Primary advisor | Prabhakar, Balaji, 1967- |
| Thesis advisor | Prabhakar, Balaji, 1967- |
| Thesis advisor | Johari, Ramesh, 1976- |
| Thesis advisor | Van Roy, Benjamin |
| Advisor | Johari, Ramesh, 1976- |
| Advisor | Van Roy, Benjamin |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Chinmoy Venkatesh Mandayam Nayaka. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Chinmoy Venkatesh Mandayam Nayaka
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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