01558130

Component

High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes have become an increasingly popular traffic management strategy for reducing freeway congestion in the United States. By offering single-occupant vehicles (SOVs) the opportunity to take advantage of underutilized High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes for a toll, the excess capacity of these lanes can be used in a way that still encourages carpooling and transit use, leading to increases in throughput and better travel time reliability. The novelty of this strategy, however, makes it difficult to say whether or not existing HOT facilities are operating as efficiently as they could be, or whether new facilities would be an effective strategy for managing congestion in areas where they do not exist. While microscopic traffic simulation is a widely-used tool for planning and evaluating traffic management strategies, the dynamic nature of these lanes cannot be accurately represented using existing simulators, especially in the case of dynamically-priced HOT lanes where the toll is based on the current state of congestion on the road. This paper presents a platform for modeling HOT operations in a microscopic traffic simulator with external modules. Developed to interface with a simulation of the I-394 corridor in Minneapolis, these modules simulate the pricing operations of the MnPASS Dynamic Pricing Algorithm currently in operation in this corridor, as well as the choices of individual drivers to subscribe to and use the MnPASS system. Together these modules have the potential to serve as a cost-effective tool for evaluating the operation of existing HOT facilities, as well as for the planning of new facilities.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB35 Managed Lanes.

01550057

15-3495

English

16p

2015

Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Algorithms; High occupancy toll lanes; Microsimulation; Planning; Pricing; Traffic congestion

MnPASS

Operational evaluation

Minneapolis (Minnesota)

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I73: Traffic Control

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2015 Paper #15-3495

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 30 2014 1:10PM