Operational Performance of High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Facilities: Comparison of Contiguous and Limited Access HOV Lanes in California

摘要

Traffic operational data from High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) facilities in California are evaluated in thisstudy. Freeway performance measures are tailored to gauge efficiency and effectiveness of HOVoperations and applied to measure the operational performance of HOV facilities in the study sites. Themeasured operational performance is then compared between HOV and GP lanes and between differenttypes of HOV configurations. Findings from the comparative evaluation show that when compared withGP-lane travels, HOV facilities carry more people-miles with fewer vehicle-miles while offeringsubstantial travel time savings to their users; and, when compared with limited-access, contiguous-accessoffer greater travel time savings for the sites examined in this study while the levels of utilization byvehicles and people are similar. Statistical tests validate the statistical significance of differences ofoperational performance. Based on these findings, implications for further improvement of HOV facilitiesare discussed.