Investigate Attractiveness of Toll Roads.

摘要

HOT facilities are used as a solution for congestion mitigation instead of constructing or expanding the capacity of existing roadways. Although toll roads modeling has been researched for a long time, High Occupancy Toll (HOT) modeling is relatively new. Due to its feature of dynamic rates and multiple access points along the route where drivers can buy in and buy out of the HOT facility easily, the drivers’ reaction to the toll rate changes varies from that on a traditional toll road and is more complicated. The percentage of SOV drivers who choose to pay for HOT lane usage is not a monotonously decreasing curve related to toll rate because the dynamically updated toll rate on a HOT lane is directly related to the traffic volume and corresponding congestion level. In this study, the data from SR-167 in the state of Washington are analyzed to study driver responses in responses to the toll rate. The percentage of SOVs, who need to pay for using the HOT facility, is analyzed against variables including toll rate, volume, speed, and speed reliability in both the HOT lane and General Purpose (GP) lane. Two sets of logistic models are fitted for the data from the year of 2008 and 2010. The results showed that the significant variables include: speed in the GP lanes, speed reliability in the GP lanes, and the traffic volumes in the GP lanes. The toll rate is only significant for the year of 2010. There is a significant ramp-up effect from 2008, the opening year, to 2010, two years after the facility opened to traffic.