Tracking the Impact of a Toll Increase on Managed Lane Travel Behavior

Abstract

Tolled managed lanes (ML) are an innovative way to increase capacity and regulate demand on roadways. They are still relatively new and a lot remains unknown about how travelers choose to use MLs or not. This paper uses disaggregate real-world travel data of travelers who choose between paying a toll to use ML or travel toll free on the adjacent general purpose lanes (GPL). The travel behavior before and after a toll increase is evaluated. The change in toll rates did not affect the overall ML use as anticipated. Overall, ML use increased after the toll increase. In addition, frequent ML users (more than 10 ML trips in a month) and infrequent ML users (1–3 ML trips in a month) behaved differently following the increase in the toll.