High Occupancy Toll Lanes with a Refund Option: A Stated Preference Survey of the Phoenix-Metropolitan Area

To further benefit the users and increase public acceptance of priced managed lanes (MLs), this study proposes an innovative pricing concept where a travel time refund (TTR) option is available. When choosing to pay to use MLs, a traveler is offered the chance to purchase an additional TTR, or “insurance”. This insurance ensures that the user will arrive to a specified destination within a certain amount of travel time savings. If the user fails to arrive at the specified destination within that time savings due to disturbances in traffic, then the user would be refunded the toll amount, but not the additional cost of the TTR. The TTR cost would always be less than the toll amount. The purpose of this study is to investigate travelers’ reactions to a possible refund option of priced MLs. To gauge general interest and concerns regarding this concept and to elicit travelers’ choices of ML usage and refund claims under various situations, a stated preference survey was developed and distributed in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area in the fall of 2014. This project report describes design of the questionnaire, administration of the survey, and preliminary results on demographic data and influencing factors.

• Record URL:
  https://mti.umd.edu/sites/mti.umd.edu/files/NTC_Lou_FinalReport_20150328.pdf
• 
• Summary URL:
  https://mti.umd.edu/ntc2014-su-r-01-behavioral-study-managed-lane-pricing-refund-option
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This document was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, University Transportation Centers Program.
• Corporate Authors:

  Arizona State University

  ,    

  National Transportation Center at Maryland

  1124 Glenn Martin Hall
  University of Maryland
  College Park, MD  United States  20742

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Lou, Yingyan
  • Archer, Melissa
• Publication Date: 2015-3

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: Appendices; Figures; Maps; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 84p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: High occupancy toll lanes; Pricing; Stated preferences; Surveys; Travel time
• Geographic Terms: Phoenix (Arizona)
• Subject Areas: Finance; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01666087
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: NTC2014-SU-R-01
• Files: UTC, TRIS, ATRI, USDOT
• Created Date: Apr 16 2018 11:20AM