Restricting Road Use Can Benefit Everyone, Part II: Time-of-Day Restrictions that Encourage Earlier Arrivals

This research considers a less restricting rationing scheme where a restriction would mean that passage through the bottleneck is banned after a certain time of the day (e.g. the start of the rush hour) but not before that time. Conservatively, we assume that the ban remains in force even after the conclusion of the rush, although in practice one would like to terminate it earlier. (This assumption limits the benefits that can be gained from control as it discourages people from delaying their arrival in order to avoid the queue.) Despite this inefficiency, the scheme is shown to have the potential for reducing everyone's travel time over a number of days. Later research will relax the end-of-the-ban assumption.