Smart Road Allocation through Auction-Based Mechanisms for Congestion Prevention^∗

In the modern world, traffic management faces significant challenges, as growing urbanization and rising vehicle ownership place unprecedented pressure on road networks, leading to persistent congestion and inefficiencies. To address this, we aim to enable vehicles with higher urgency or greater willingness to pay to access the most valuable routes and time slots, while guiding other traffic toward alternative paths or off-peak periods. We present a network-wide traffic management mechanism that allocates complete, uncongested routes via an online combinatorial auction across space–time road segments, achieving incentive compatibility up to ε—so that any potential gain from misreporting is bounded by ε, and truthful reporting remains essentially optimal for all users. Simulation results on an OSM-derived urban network show that our mechanism consistently achieves higher social welfare and more efficient capacity utilization than the BG baseline, fixed-price allocation, and free entry (where segments close once capacity is reached). The approach maintains fairness and service quality, requires no dedicated infrastructure or pre-declared tolls, and ensures predictable travel times by pre-allocating complete routes subject to capacity.