A New Paradigm in User Equilibrium-Application in Managed Lane Pricing

Ineffective use of the High-Occupancy-Vehicle (HOV) lanes has the potential to decrease theoverall roadway throughput during peak periods. Excess capacity in HOV lanes during peakperiods can be made available to other types of vehicles, including single occupancy vehicles(SOV) for a price (toll). Such dual use lanes are known as “Managed Lanes.” The main purposeof this research is to propose a new paradigm in user equilibrium to predict the travel demand fordetermining the optimal fare policy for managed lane facilities. Depending on their value of time,motorists may choose to travel on Managed Lanes (ML) or General Purpose Lanes (GPL). In thisstudy, the features in the software called Toll Pricing Modeler version 4.3 (TPM-4.3) aredescribed. TPM-4.3 is developed based on this new user equilibrium concept and utilizes it toexamine various operating scenarios. The software has two built-in operating objective options: 1)what would the ML operating speed be for a specified SOV toll, or 2) what should the SOV toll befor a desired minimum ML operating speed.A number of pricing policy scenarios are developed and examined on the proposed managedlane segment on Interstate 30 (I-30) in Grand Prairie, Texas. The software provides quantitativeestimates of various factors including toll revenue, emissions and system performance such asperson movement and traffic speed on managed and general purpose lanes. Overall, among thescenarios examined, higher toll rates tend to generate higher toll revenues, reduce overall COand NOx emissions, and shift demand to general purpose lanes. On the other hand, HOVpreferential treatments at any given toll level tend to reduce toll revenue, have no impact on orreduce system performance on managed lanes, and increase CO and NOx emissions.