This paper studies the combination of tolls that maximises equality in an interurban network with a toll highway and a free parallel single road which could be tolled as well. Equality is defined by a novel indicator which reflexes earlier equality definitions; it measures the proportion of travellers’ willingness to pay not consumed by the monetary transport costs with respect to their willingness to pay. Users are heterogeneous as their values of travel time (VTT) are different. The research also analyses how the VTT distribution affects this optimal combination. The authors conduct several numerical analyses and compare results under two cases: welfare maximization and equality maximization. For the type of network and users selected the results show that the higher the average VTT, the higher the optimal price, and the higher the dispersion (variance) of VTT, the lower the optimal price. Moreover, to optimize equality, the road should remain free. The most equitable scenario worsen high-income users whereas middle-income users benefit from it. More users are better off under the welfare scenario, which also leads to a higher overall surplus. Finally, welfare pricing and equality pricing schemes work oppositely but match for high traffic levels.

本文研究了在具有收费公路和可以收费的免费平行单路的城际网络中最大化平等的收费组合。平等是由一个反映早期平等定义的新指标定义的；它衡量旅行者支付意愿未被货币运输成本消耗的支付意愿与其支付意愿的比例。用户是异构的，因为他们的旅行时间 (VTT) 值不同。该研究还分析了 VTT 分布如何影响这种最佳组合。作者进行了多项数值分析并比较了两种情况下的结果：福利最大化和平等最大化。对于选择的网络类型和用户，结果表明平均 VTT 越高，最优价格越高，VTT 的离差（方差）越大，最优价格越低。此外，为了优化平等，道路应该保持畅通。最公平的情况会使高收入用户恶化，而中等收入用户从中受益。在福利情景下，更多的用户会变得更好，这也导致更高的总体盈余。最后，福利定价和平等定价计划相反，但匹配高流量水平。