Are managed lanes worth it? Empirical data on time savings and tolls paid from SR91, California

Managed lanes are fast becoming an important asset class within the toll road sector for private investors and public private partnership (PPP) projects. Managed lanes (also referred to as high occupancy toll lanes) provide several advantages over greenfield projects as they are typically built alongside existing congested (and free) highway sections thus somewhat reducing the traffic and revenue risk. In this paper we will present the results of research on the travel time savings achieved and the tolls paid at different times of the day on SR91 managed lanes in California. The results indicate that users of the managed lanes often pay high toll rates for minimal time savings for many parts of the day - indeed there are some time periods when the time savings are significant thereby justifying the high toll rates. This behavior of the users of managed lanes can be partially explained by the fact that many such users often overestimate their time savings and are often paying the tolls for the reliability that they will be able to reach a certain destination in a reasonable amount of time. The result of this research will be useful to the demand forecasting community and to the investor community that is planning for such projects.

• Authors:
  • Agrawal, B
  • Bhandari, N
• Conference:
  • International Road Federation World Meeting, 16th, 2010, Lisbon, Portugal
• Publication Date: 2010-5

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: 10p (oral presentations)
• Serial:
  • Issue Number: 361

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Highway traffic control; Toll roads; Traffic lanes; Travel time
• Geographic Terms: California
• ATRI Terms: Traffic lane; Traffic management; Travel time
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01382612
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: ARRB
• Files: ATRI
• Created Date: Aug 22 2012 1:24PM