In recent years, high occupancy/toll (HOT) lanes have gained increasing recognition as a potential method of managing traffic congestion. HOT lanes combine pricing and vehicle occupancy restrictions to optimize the demand for high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. Besides having all the advantages of traditional HOV lanes, HOT lanes can also generate revenue to help finance various operation and maintenance programs. At present there are four fairly well established HOT lane projects in the United States: two in Houston, Texas, and one each in San Diego, and Riverside County, California. After 6 years in operation, Houston's HOT lanes receive comparatively lower patronage than the two California projects. An understanding of why people choose to use HOT lanes will be vital to improving the performance of existing HOT facilities and will also shed light on policy decisions regarding future HOT lane investments. This study examined the relative importance of different parameters which could be expected to influence the demand for HOT lanes using standard statistical and discrete choice modeling techniques on survey data from Houston's HOT lane users. The study showed that, controlling for other variables, trip length, the driver's perception of travel time savings offered by the HOT lanes, frequency of travel in the freeway corridor, trip purpose, and the amount of time spent on carpool formation were good predictors of HOT lane usage. Socioeconomic characteristics such as age and level of education were also good indicators of the frequency of HOT lane usage whereas household size, occupation, and hourly wage rate were not. Gender and annual household income were only loosely related to HOT lane usage. Inelastic responses to minor changes in the toll coupled by responses to a question regarding participants feeling towards the $2.00 toll, suggested that the toll was not a major deterrent to HOT lane usage. A primary deterrent was the need for one passenger to use the HOT lane when free use required two passengers. However, travelers who shared the toll with their carpool partners were likely to have made more frequent HOT lane trips than those who bore the entire cost.

Value pricing strategies are beginning to be considered for future improvements in suburban areas that currently do not experience significant congestion but are expected to become congested in the future. This is a significant departure from implementing these strategies in congested urban areas as is commonly done now. Therefore, traveler reaction in these suburban areas is unknown. To plan and design value pricing projects most effectively, it will be necessary to gain an understanding of suburban travelers' potential reaction to value pricing. Responses to a survey of travelers using the eastern and western segments of Interstate 10 (I-10) outside of San Antonio were used to study differences in response to value pricing by suburban population groups. These surveys collected information on travelers' socioeconomic and trip characteristics as well as their attitudes towards value pricing in the form of potential Express Toll Lanes (ETLS). Stated preference scenarios presented to survey respondents were used to develop mode choice models. These models were used to determine characteristics that may impact the decision to choose to travel on the general purpose lanes (GPLs) or the ETLs. This research suggests that the implementation of value pricing strategies on suburban corridors may pose a challenge from a policy standpoint. The populations using these corridors appear to be more varied in their responses toward value pricing than populations using congested urban corridors. Overall, it was found that the majority of travelers on I-10E and I-10W are not favorable to the implementation of value pricing for the future expansion of these corridors. However, I-10W travelers seem to be more willing to pay for travel time savings. This is likely due to the fact that travelers on I-10W earn higher average incomes, are more likely to use I-10W on a regular basis for commute purposes, and are more often exposed to some traffic congestion. Conversely, travelers on I-10E are more likely to use I-10E less frequently for non-commute trips, travel longer distances, and probably do not have an intuitive sense of the value they would place on travel time savings since they do not regularly experience congestion.

Value pricing is now an accepted strategy for congestion and demand management in metropolitan areas. Along with alternate congestion management strategies, many transportation agencies have started looking at value pricing as a method to help financial shortfalls of new congestion management projects. Value pricing allows revenue collected from toll facilities to reduce operational concerns with underutilized High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) facilities and relieves environmental concerns by reducing travel demand. Recently, transportation agencies have become increasingly interested in a high-occupancy toll (HOT) lane value pricing system with time-dependent tolls or dynamic tolls that change by the congestion level. However, there is a lack of proper travel demand forecasting tools that can evaluate and determine the impacts of pricing on travelers' decision in relation to congestion. The current methods use aggregated and zonal based approaches that lack the capability of tracing individual travelers through the supply network in order to capture his/her travel decisions as it pertains to the estimated cost for toll usage. The conventional models do not consider individual traveler socio-economic characteristics, particularly the heterogeneous value of time (VOT). TRANSIMS (Transportation Analysis Simulation System) differs from current travel demand forecasting methods in its underlying concepts and structure. These differences include a consistent and continuous representation of time, a detailed representation of persons and households, time-dependent routing, and a person-based Microsimulator. The TRANSIMS Microsimulator is the only simulation tool that maintains the identity of the traveler throughout the simulation and is capable of accessing the database of each individual (e.g., income, age, trip purpose). It traces the movement of people as well as vehicles on a second-by-second basis. Although TRANSIMS environment has significantly improved over the past few years, there are still issues that need to be improved upon including: the pricing of a HOT lane with dynamic tolls and the rescheduling of activities (i.e., departure time choice model) in response to network conditions. The primary objectives of this study are to improve functions of TRANSIMS by modifying source codes in order to utilize non-linear, individual VOT function in route choice of a HOT lane value pricing system, to implement 15-min dynamic tolls that vary by level of service (i.e., volume/capacity ratio) in the HOT lane(s) and to develop departure time choice model. Testing the proposed methodologies using real-world data as case studies and evaluating the impacts of dynamic tolls and/or departure time choice model are other objectives of this study. The test site of the HOT lane system is a segment of I-5 northbound from Hwy 217 to I-405 near the central business district (CBD) in Portland metropolitan region, Oregon. The experimental analyses of the application of dynamic tolls and individual VOT demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed simulation methodology. The outputs from the microscopic analysis clearly indicate the effectiveness of the analysis in scrutinizing travelers' route choice behavior based on different socio-economic and travel characteristics when different toll rates are applied. The effects of individual VOT on route choice are consistent with intuition; that is, travelers with higher VOTs are more likely to choose the HOT lane(s). In addition, the impacts of various tolls on route choice are analyzed on the basis of socio-economic and trip characteristics of each traveler. In addition to the development of the dynamic value pricing along with individual VOT, the departure time choice model is also developed. The proposed method is a post-processing of route choice and represents a sequential decision making process of travelers who want to depart early or late based on congestion, individual attributes and activity characteristics. This paper presents the results of a departure time choice model and its impacts on a HOT lane system using Portland, Oregon as a case study. The results show that 13.9% of households did change their departure time because of congestion and/or tolls. / Ph. D.

Marketing literature has propagated “customer-participation” and “co-production” in the seller-buyer framework since the 1970s (Lovelock and Young 1979), yet marketing knowledge gaps exist in this area. Recent management research emphasise the need to re-evaluate how value is created for consumers and to consider the close nature of the interactions between buyers and sellers (Payne et al 2008). Vargo and Lusch’s (2004) proposed service-dominant logic reiterates this need, arguing that the “customer is always the co-creator of value”, as they are part of the system that delivers value. Understanding value co-creation is then important to management research, as it uncovers new opportunities to create “value” for customers. This also enables firms to formulate better pricing strategies. This thesis examines value co-creation attributes and how they may impact on the customer’s willingness to pay. Three studies utilising qualitative and quantitative methods have been conducted to address the research question. The first two studies employed qualitative methods to derive insights into value co-creation attributes from a comparative case study perspective under two different service contexts; the defence and healthcare industries. The third study, conducted under the higher education context, employed quantitative methods to gauge the impact of value co-creation attributes on the customers’ willingness to pay. The qualitative studies found six generic value co-creation attributes, while the quantitative study empirically verified the importance of value co-creation attributes and the fact that they may impact on the customer’s willingness to pay for a service. This thesis validates that value co-creation is important in service provision. As customers become increasingly informed and empowered, a deeper understanding of how customers co-create value with the firm is then central to marketing activities, specifically in how firms design and price their services. Therefore, this thesis contributes to marketing knowledge by proposing value co-creation attributes that have both theoretical and managerial implications.

Carpools can be comprised of family members (fampools), non-family members (non-fampools) or a combination of both. Overall, carpool mode share has decreased during the 1980's and 1990's, even as the policies were in place to encourage carpooling, but at the same time the share of fampools increased quite significantly. By analyzing the characteristics of fampools and non-fampools, we can better understand how policies may impact each group. One area of particular interest is the impact of managed lanes on the mode choice of fampools and non-fampools. For this research, survey data collected from both Houston and Dallas, Texas was used to investigate the mode choice of fampools and non-fampools on managed lanes. The survey data was weighted to better represent the traveler population. The weighted survey data was analyzed to better understand the characteristics of fampools and non-fampools. Non-fampools were formed more frequently in a week than fampools. The average carpool formation time was similar for both fampools and non-fampools at 6.4 minutes and 6.2 minutes, respectively. Fampools rated "drop off kids at school or day care" higher than non-fampools and non-fampools rated "sharing vehicle expenses" higher than fampools as the most important reason for the formation of their current carpool. A majority of travelers from both groups showed an interest in using managed lanes and "travel time reliability" was rated most important factor for this interest. Fampools and non-fampools were split into subgroups based on their current number of passengers. Among these four sub-groups, the majority of respondents were interested in using managed lanes. Random parameter logit models were developed for both fampools and non-fampools. For the fampools, the value of travel time savings was estimated to be $ 22.80 per hour. Non-fampools were not sensitive to the travel time. Different travel scenarios were simulated for both fampools and non-fampools. The results showed that with increased tolls on the managed lanes the decrease in carpool mode share on managed lanes was compensated by an increase in carpool mode share on the GPLs for both fampools and non-fampools. With an increased toll, both fampools and non-fampools showed less sensitivity to the toll cost. The estimated demand elasticity was fairly inelastic for both fampools and non-fampools.

Due to recent pricing studies that have revealed substantial variability in values of time among decision makers with the same socioeconomic characteristics, there is substantial interest in modeling the observed heterogeneity. This study addresses this problem by revealing a previously overlooked connection between choice set and choice behavior. This study estimates a discrete choice model for mode plus route plus time choice, subdivides the population according to empirically formed choice sets, and finds systematic variations among four choice set groups in user preferences for price managed lanes. Rather than assume the same values of the coefficients for all users, the model is separately estimated for each choice set group, and the null hypothesis of no taste variations among them is rejected, suggesting that choice set is an indicator for choice behavior. In the State Route 91 study corridor, the price-managed lanes compete with at least two other congestion-avoiding alternatives. The principal hypothesis is that a person’s willingness to pay depends on whether or not he perceives as personally feasible the option to bypass some congestion in a traditional carpool lane or by traveling outside the peak period. The procedure for estimating the choice sets empirically is predicated on the notion that individuals operate within a wide array of unobservable constraints that can establish the infeasibility of either alternative. The universal choice set includes eight combinations of mode and time and route, wherein there are exactly two alternatives for each. Choice sets are formed from an assumed minimum set, which is expanded to one of three others whenever a non-zero choice probability for either ridesharing, or shoulder period travel, or both is revealed in a person’s history of choice behavior. Based on the test of taste variations, this author finds different values of time across the four choice set groups in the study sample. If these relationships can be validated in other locations, this would make a strong case for modeling choice behavior in value pricing as a function of choice set.

The predictability of the US-based international mutual fund returns has received renewed consideration in recent academic studies. This dissertation extends recent research by exploring the 2,479 daily return observations covering the period from January 4, 1993 to October 31, 2002 for all categories of international mutual funds. This exploration splits the sample, uses the initial sub-sample to investigate return patterns of international mutual funds and develops trading rules based on the predictable return patterns, and tests those rules on the holdout sample. The empirical findings suggest that smart investors may earn higher riskadjusted returns by following daily dynamic trading strategies. The excess returns earned by investors are statistically and economically significant, irrespective of load or no-load mutual funds and even in the presence of various exchange restrictions and regulations.

The diploma thesis deals with basic terminology and methods for real estate pricing in the theoretical part of the thesis. The description of priced locality, sources and aid materials for real estate inspection are introduced in the thesis. The practical part is focused on the description and pricing ten recreation cottages near town called Jevíčko. The result of the thesis is the comparison of single pricing and assessment of the most convenient pricing method for a particular real estate.

This thesis examines the marginal cost of congested travel to a variety of businesses by observing time spent in congestion and estimating excess labor costs based upon the relevant value of time. The fleets in the scoping study represented commercial deliveries of goods and services, government agencies, and transit systems. Observations on limited-access expressways within the 13-county Atlanta metropolitan region were used in the analysis. Vehicles were monitored by using a passive GPS assembly that transmitted speed and location data in real-time to an off-site location. Installation and operation during the observation period required no interaction from the driver. Over 217 hours of good freeway movement during 354 vehicle-days was recorded. Rates of delay, expressed as a unit of lost minutes per mile traveled, were calculated by taking the difference in speeds observed during congestion from an optimal free-flow speed of 45 mph and dividing that by the distance traveled per segment. The difference between the 50th and 95th percentile delay rates was used as the measure for travel unreliability. Daily average values of extra time needed per fleet vehicle to ensure on-time arrivals were derived, and the median buffer across all fleets was 1.65 hours of added time per vehicle. Weekly marginal costs per fleet vehicle were estimated by factoring in the corresponding driver wages or hourly operation costs (for transit fleets). Equivalent toll rates were calculated by multiplying the 95th percentile delay rate by the hourly costs. The equivalent toll per mile traveled was representative of an equal relationship between the marginal costs of congestion experienced and a hypothetical state of free-flow travel (under first-best rules of marginal cost pricing). The median equivalent toll rates across all fleets was $0.43 per mile for weekday mornings, $0.13 per mile for midday weekdays, $0.53 per mile for afternoon weekdays and $0.01 per mile for weekday nights and weekends.

This paper examines the issues of equity, as applicable to the HOV-to-HOT conversion project planned for the I-85 North corridor in the Metropolitan Atlanta Region. A review of literature is undertaken to describe the typology of transportation equity issues within the wider context of environmental justice, and to highlight socio-economic factors and local and national transportation funding factors that influence people's travel choices and their mobility and accessibility options. Demographic data on the I-85 corridor peak period commuters in Metropolitan Atlanta is analyzed, in addition to results of focus groups polling current Metropolitan Atlanta interstate commuters on the topic of managed lanes during 2008. The thesis makes a conclusion that a final decision about the equity impact of the I-85 HOV-to-HOT conversion is likely not possible without undertaking a Metropolitan area-wide analysis. Some of the equity findings that emerge indicate that there are no significant income differences between the the HOV lane users and general purpose lane I-85 commuters; that there are differences between median incomes of block groups represented by current I-85 commuters (both HOV lane users and general purpose lane users) and median incomes of block groups typical for the base geography; and that investing in Xpress bus service improvements would primarily serve those households with more vehicles than drivers, unless improvements to reverse commute options and feeder bus networks are made. The focus group findings suggest that current interstate highway users in Metropolitan Atlanta, originating in the suburbs, are generally accepting of the HOT concept and recognize the value of travel time savings.