Queuing Systems: Lecture 5
Amedeo R. Odoni
October 22, 2001
Quiz #1: October 29
? Open book, 85 minutes (start 10:30)
? Chapter 4 coverage: Sections 4.1through
4.7 (inclusive); Section 4.9 (skim through
4.9.4) [Up to lecture of 10/22]
? Review Problem Set 3
? Review some old quizzes
? Prof. Barnett: Quiz review today
? Odoni: Office Hours, Friday, 1:30-3:00
Lecture Outline
? Bounds for G/G/1 systems
? A numerical example
? Congestion pricing in transportation:
the fundamental ideas
? Congestion pricing and queuing theory
? Numerical example
? Practical complications
? The LaGuardia Airport example
A general upper bound for G/G/1
systems
? A number of bounds have been obtained for more
general cases (see Section 4.9)
? A good example is an upper bound for the waiting time at
G/G/1 systems:
(7)
where X and S are, respectively, the r.v.’s denoting inter-
arrival times and service times
? Under some fairly general conditions, such bounds can
be tightened and perform extremely well
)1()1(2 )(
22
<?? +?≤ rrssl SXqW
Better bounds
for a (not so) special case
? For G/G/1 systems whose inter-arrival times have the
property that for all non-negative values of t0,
l
1]|[
00 ≤>? tXtXE
it has been shown that:
)1()1(2 )(21
22
<?? +?=≤≤+? rrssllr SXq BWB
(what does this mean, intuitively?)
? Note that the upper and lower bounds in (8) differ by,
at most, 1/l and that the percent difference between
the upper and lower bounds decreases as r increases!
(8)
Congestion pricing:
The basic observation
? The congestion costs due to any specific user
have 2 components:
(1) Cost of delay to that user (internal cost)
(2) Cost of delay to all other users caused by that user
(external cost)
? At congested airports (and congested facilities,
in general) this second component can be very
large
? A congestion toll can be imposed to force
users to experience this cost component (to
“internalize the external costs”)
Economic principle
Optimal use of a transportation facility cannot be
achieved unless each additional (marginal)
user pays for all the additional costs that this
user imposes on all other users and on the
facility itself. A congestion toll not only
contributes to maximizing social economic
welfare, but is also necessary to reach such a
result. (Vickrey, 1967, 1969; Carlin + Park,
1970)
Two hard technical problems
? In practice it is very hard to:
(1) Estimate external marginal delay costs
(extensive data analysis or difficult simulation
is typically needed);
(2) Determine equilibrium congestion tolls (trial-
and error approach that may take long time to
converge is used sometimes).
? Queuing theory has much to offer (especially
with regards to the first problem) under certain
conditions.
Congestion pricing
and queuing theory
qq WccLC l==
MC = dCdl = c Wq + cl dWqdl
Consider a queuing facility with a single type of customer
in steady-state. Let
c = delay cost per unit time per customer
C = total cost of delay per unit time incurred in the system
at equilibrium
and the marginal delay cost, MC , imposed by an
additional (“marginal”) customer is given by:
Congestion pricing
and queuing theory (2)
? Note that the first term on the right is
the “internal cost” experienced by the
marginal customer and the second term
is the “external cost” (s)he imposes!
? These ideas can be extended to cases
with multiple types of customers and to
systems with priorities.
Generalizing to m types of users…
l i
l = l i
i= 1
m
Si mi
-1 = E S
i[ ]
1
m = E S[ ]=
l i
l ·
1
m i
?
?
i =1
m
r = lm = ri
i= 1
m
= lim
ii =1
m
ci
c = l il ci ? ?
i= 1
m
? Facility users of type i: arrival rate ;
service time with ;
cost per unit of time in the system
? For entire set of facility users, we have
Generalization (continued)
C = cLq = clWq
MC(i) = dCdl
i
= ciWq + cl dWqdl
i
? As before:
giving:
? When we have explicit expressions for Wq,
we can also compute explicitly the marginal
social cost MC(i), the internal (or private)
cost and the external cost associated with
each additional user of type i
Issues that arise in practice
-- Toll may vary in time and by location
-- Facility users may be driven by
“network” considerations
-- “Social benefit” considerations
-- What to do with the money?
-- Politics
Demand Profiles at LaGuardia
Number of runway operations per hour
? Scheduled
passenger
flights
reduced
by 10%
(from
1,348 to
1,216/day)
Hour of the day (scheduled time of operation)
E.g. 5 means 5:00 am – 5:59 am
Sources: OAG and FAA, based on Monday schedules for Nov 13 and Feb 12
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 1 3
Nov 00
Feb 01
Capacity
at 75
ops/hr
Average delay at LaGuardia
Minutes/flight
? Average
delay
reduced
by >80%
during
evening
hours
? >900 hrs
per day
saved
Hour of the day
Capacity = 75 operations/hr
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 1 3
Nov 00
Feb 01
Effect of reducing and spreading demand
can be large at very congested airports
Total delay (aircraft-hour)
1160
216 176
944
40
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
Schedules in
Nov, 00
Flights
discontinued
since Nov, 00
Schedules in
Feb, 01
Redistributing
remaining
flights
Resultant
delays
Reduction in
delays
Congestion
delays as a result
Demand profiles at LaGuardia
Number of runway operations per hour
? Scheduled
passenger
flights
reduced
by 10%
(from
1,348 to
1,216/day)
Hour of the day (scheduled time of operation)
E.g. 5 means 5:00 am – 5:59 am
Sources: OAG and FAA, based on Monday schedules for Nov 13 and Feb 12
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 1 3
Nov 00
Feb 01
Capacity
at 75
ops/hr
Marginal delay caused by an additional flight
Marginal delay caused by an additional flight
operation at LaGuardia (aircraft-hours)
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 0 1 2 3 4
Nov 00
Feb 01
Hour of the day
External delay costs are not reflected
in weight-based landing fees: Feb 01 schedule
Cost per average aircraft operation at
LaGuardia (US$/extra operation)
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
7,000
5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 1 3
Increase in
total direct
operating costs
to all flights
due to one
extra operation
Current charge
($300 per
operation)
Hour of the day
Distribution of Aircraft Size at LaGuardia
Frequency of operations
? Average aircraft
size at LGA is 102
seats, or 52,000 kg
MTOW,
corresponding to
about USD
$1,600/hr of direct
operating costs
? 4 aircraft-hours of
delay translates to
about $6,400
congestion cost
per marginal
operation
Aircraft seating capacity (e.g. 40 = 21 - 40 seats)
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
20 40 60 70 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260