Since the 1960âÂÂs, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes have been successfully used as a
travel demand management technique. In recent years, there has been a growing interest
in the use of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes as an alternative to HOV lanes to help
manage the increasing demand for travel. HOT lanes combine pricing and vehicle
occupancy restrictions to optimize the demand for HOV lanes. As two of the four HOT
lanes in the world, the HOT lane facilities in Houston, Texas received relatively low
patronage after operating for over 6 years on the Katy Freeway and over 4 years on the
Northwest Freeway. There existed an opportunity to increase the usage of these HOT
lanes by allowing single-occupancy vehicle (SOV) travelers to use the lanes, for an
appropriate toll. The potential SOV demand for HOV lane use during the off-peak
periods 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 of
travelers on the Katy and Northwest Freeway GPLs who were not enrolled in
QuickRide. Based on survey results, more travelers would choose to drive on the HOT lanes
as SOV travelers during the off-peak periods when the facilities provided higher travel
time savings and charged lower tolls. Two important factors influencing travelersâ use
of the HOV lanes were their value of travel time savings (VTTS) and penalty for
changing travel schedule (VPCS). It was found that respondents had VTTS
approximately 43 percent of their hourly wage rate and VPCS approximately 3 percent
of their hourly wage rate. Combining this information with current travel time savings
and available capacity on the HOV lanes, it was found that approximately 2000 SOV
travelers per day would pay an average toll of $2.25 to use the HOV lanes during the
off-peak periods.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/4358 |
| Date | 30 October 2006 |
| Creators | Xu, Lei |
| Contributors | Burris, Mark W. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | 887216 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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