A self-adaptive toll rate algorithm for high occupancy toll (HOT) lane operations.

Details

• Creators:
  Wang, Yinhai ; Zhang, Guohui
• Corporate Creators:
  Transportation Northwest Regional Center X (TransNow) (UTC)
• Corporate Contributors:
  Washington (State). Department of Transportation ; United States. Department of Transportation. Office of the Secretary
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • High occupancy vehicle lanes
  • High occupancy toll lanes
  • High occupancy vehicle lanes
  • Toll roads
  • Toll collection High occupancy vehicle lanes--Washington (State)--Management
  • Toll roads--Washington (State)--Management
  • Feedback control systems--Washington (State)
• Publication/ Report Number:
  TNW2009-09
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  Washington
• Edition:
  Final report.
• Corporate Publisher:
  Transportation Northwest (TransNow) UTC
• Abstract:
  Dramatically increasing travel demands and insufficient traffic facility supplies have resulted in severe ; traffic congestion. High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lane operations have been proposed as one of the most ; applicable and cost-effective countermeasures against freeway congestion. By allowing Single Occupancy ; Vehicles (SOVs) to use High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes with a toll, excess capacities of HOV lanes can ; be utilized. Through balancing pricing and vehicle occupancy constraints, an HOT lane system can optimize ; traffic allocations between HOT and General Purpose (GP) lanes and hence enhance the overall infrastructure ; efficiency if a proper tolling strategy is employed. Although there exist several tolling strategies, two major ; problems with these tolling strategies may significantly degrade the HOT lane system performance. First, the ; under-sensitive tolling algorithm is incapable of handling the hysteresis properties of traffic systems and may ; cause severe response delays. Secondly, unfavorable flow fluctuation on both HOT and GP lanes may result ; from over-sensitive tolling strategies and generate agitating traffic operations. ; To address these problems, a new self-adaptive dynamic tolling algorithm is developed in this study to ; optimize HOT lane operations. To reduce the computational complexity, a second-order control scheme is ; exploited in this algorithm. Based on traffic speed conditions and toll changing patterns, the optimum flow ; ratio for HOT lane utilization is calculated using feedback control theory. Then the appropriate toll rate is ; estimated backward using the discrete route choice model. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed ; tolling algorithm, simulation experiments were conducted. A microscopic traffic simulation software tool, ; VISSIM, is utilized. The proposed algorithm is implemented and integrated with the VISSIM package through ; an external module specifically developed for this study. Data from the Washington State Route (SR) 167 ; HOT lane system is used to build and calibrate the simulation model. The simulation experiment results show ; that the proposed tolling algorithm is capable of responding to traffic changes promptly and effectively. It ; performed reasonably well in optimizing overall traffic operations of the HOT lane system under various ; traffic conditions. This algorithm is logically straightforward and not difficult to implement.
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• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  DTRT07-G-0010
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/17406/dot_17406_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.27 MB]
• Collection(s):
  University Transportation Centers ; US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:df83d8acae30d3cf80bab27f6cf33ac919b3372568b8dd63f8fe5fa20dbda004b2cde3da4634ac3c504a81d29fbf97f7ee7651e7201316ad2ecc3b7c1c23a75d