Since the 1960??????s, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes have been successfully used as atravel demand management technique. In recent years, there has been a growing interestin the use of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes as an alternative to HOV lanes to helpmanage the increasing demand for travel. HOT lanes combine pricing and vehicleoccupancy restrictions to optimize the demand for HOV lanes. As two of the four HOTlanes in the world, the HOT lane facilities in Houston, Texas received relatively lowpatronage after operating for over 6 years on the Katy Freeway and over 4 years on theNorthwest Freeway. There existed an opportunity to increase the usage of these HOTlanes by allowing single-occupancy vehicle (SOV) travelers to use the lanes, for anappropriate toll. The potential SOV demand for HOV lane use during the off-peakperiods from the Katy Freeway and Northwest Freeway general-purpose lane (GPL)travelers was estimated in this study by using the data collected from a 2003 survey oftravelers on the Katy and Northwest Freeway GPLs who were not enrolled inQuickRide. Based on survey results, more travelers would choose to drive on the HOT lanesas SOV travelers during the off-peak periods when the facilities provided higher traveltime savings and charged lower tolls. Two important factors influencing travelers?????? useof the HOV lanes were their value of travel time savings (VTTS) and penalty forchanging travel schedule (VPCS). It was found that respondents had VTTSapproximately 43 percent of their hourly wage rate and VPCS approximately 3 percentof their hourly wage rate. Combining this information with current travel time savingsand available capacity on the HOV lanes, it was found that approximately 2000 SOVtravelers per day would pay an average toll of $2.25 to use the HOV lanes during theoff-peak periods.
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