The objective of this research is to investigate the effects of road pricing plan, land-use policy and investments on transportation infrastructure on urbanized region and to help select the appropriate policies that foster socially and economically sustainable urban development. Most current road pricing research and practice have focused on the function of road pricing to manage congestion and to raise revenue. However, little is known about the effects of road pricing and land-use policies on the sustainability of an area over time. This can raise enormous concerns with respect to social equity and the political acceptability of policies among motorists, researchers, policy makers and urban economic entities. This project aims to construct an scenario based integrated transport land use model to investigate how road pricing policies and revenue-based local investments affect the efficiency of transportation systems and equitable and sustainable developments of urban or suburban communities focusing on the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan region. Among three constituent parts of sustainable development that are environmental protection, economic development, and social development, this project contributes to improving economic and social sustainability in terms of modeling initiative.

This project will mainly deliver methodologies and tools that facilitate the design and implementation of sustainability-oriented policies. In particular, this project will, for the first time, initiate a spatially disaggregate PECAS type transportation land-use model combined with travel demand models to forecast and evaluate the impact of road pricing for the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan region. The results of this research will advance our understanding on how policy decisions for vehicular networks and urban land-use affect the entire economy of the region and the sustainability of its local communities. This research will provide researchers, regional planning communities, and policymakers with new modeling, algorithmic and simulation foundations to address the equity and sustainability concerns from the general public. Since this research will be verified and tested with a real-world case involving Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan region, the results will have considerable potential to be applied in practical planning. The research findings will be disseminated via journal articles and conference presentations.