Evaluation of pricing tools in urban multimodal paths

Modal change nodes play a relevant role in urban passenger mobility. The main aim of this work is to analyse different pricing tools aimed at minimizing the negative components of the transition costs from the private modality to the mass transit one at the modal change nodes. In particular, we compute and compare the generalized cost of origin-destination paths in the case of both multimodal and private networks. We report on some data related to the city of Genoa, Italy, in that for its topological and geographical structure, and the wide offer of the public transportation system, it is well suitable for intermodality. We perform some scenario analysis using the spreadsheet Excel considering different origindestination paths and different pricing policies. In particular, we investigate some possibilities that reflect two different government policies: 1) to increase the cost of the private paths by introducing road fees and increasing the cost of the car parks in the main central areas; 2) to reduce the cost of intermodal paths by reducing both the parking fee and the bus ticket. Results obtained by using these different policies depend on many factors, among others the perception of the services offered by the mass transit transport and the cost of the transaction arcs at the modal change nodes. For these reasons, in the scenario analyses we evaluate the effect of the different pricing policies when varying the weight of two main components of the generalized cost function: the cost components and the time ones. Keywords: multimodal passenger transport, pricing tools, spreadsheet optimization, generalized cost function, shortest paths.