Abstract This study analyzes revenue-neutral, time-varying congestion pricing in a bottleneck model with heterogeneous commuters by developing a transparent and tractable welfare framework to examine how schedule-delay heterogeneity shapes the untolled equilibrium, distribution of congestion costs across commuter groups, and welfare gains from pricing. In the baseline setting, heterogeneity generates queuing inefficiencies and unequal generalized cost burdens across two commuter groups, whereas a properly designed time-dependent toll decentralizes the no-queue social optimum under revenue-neutrality. The analysis further introduces a parsimonious heterogeneity-intensity parameter and a rebate parameter to show how departures from the homogeneous benchmark influence welfare incidence and the magnitude of congestion pricing gains. Additional extensions test the robustness of these results under stochastic operating conditions, value-of-time indifference bands, and reliability and safety considerations. The results show that revenue neutral, time-varying tolls can improve peak-period efficiency while allowing a disciplined assessment of incidence, equity, and reliability in heterogeneous commuting environments.
Gökhan Güven (Thu,) studied this question.