Is it time to go for no-car zone policies? Braess Paradox Detection

Abstract

No-car zone is becoming a trend in many parts of the world, mainly driven by environmental motives. Recent data has shown that both vehicle kilometers traveled and car ownership are on the decline, especially in developed countries. This has been coupled with the rise of new urban mobility concepts such as smart mobility, car sharing, and green modes. Can we push for these policies without compromising traffic circulation? The Braess Paradox (BP) suggests that road closure can, in fact, improve traffic congestion; dubbed as the Braess Paradox Detection Problem (BPDP). This study aims to leverage the BP to boost the idea of the no-car zone. To this end, we formulate the BPDP as a bilevel problem and develop a heuristic methodology (a surrogate-based algorithm) to identify roads for closure in the heart of the cities to be reclaimed for green space, pedestrian plazas, and so on. Furthermore, our proposed formulation considers travel demand elasticity resulting from road-closure schemes while solving for the BPDP. We test the methodology using a real dataset, the road network of Winnipeg. The results indicate strong evidence and justification supporting the idea of no-car zone even in the heart of highly congested cities.