Influence of Social Indices on Demand and Supply Policies in Petrol Stations with Congested Queue

The growth and development of urbanization and irregular migration have caused many problems in cities. These issues arose as a result of an imbalanced demand and supply in traffic facilities, resulting in congestion and fuel waste. This problem has explicitly emerged in Iran and is more explicit in Tehran, as its developing capital. One of the main traffic facilities that shows the demand and supply functions is the petrol station. This unbalance is more visible, particularly in Tehran's north, due to high residential density and high land prices. It means it is not possible or cost-effective to construct new stations. Thus, most of the time, long petrol queues waste energy and negatively affect the people in the line. Increasing prices is one of the proper solutions for managing demand to solve this problem, which has been suggested by traffic engineers in recent years. The current study collects data from users of petrol stations in the north of Tehran randomly via questionnaires using the stated preference method to show the sensitivity of price for them. This data is analyzed using SPSS, and the influence of gender, age, residence, education, occupation, car's value, users' threshold of tolerance, and time is investigated. Results show that in all these indices, time has great importance and it makes exceptions. When time is important to the user, he or she is willing to pay more. This is true regardless of the user's wealth, education, job, or place of residence.

Keywords:

Stated Preference , Increasing Price , Petrol station , Tehran