ITE TASK FORCE REPORT HOT lanes recommended

ITE TASK FORCE

REPORT

HOT lanes recommended

A special Task Force of the Institute of Transp Engineers has strongly endorsed High Occupancy/Toll others (HOT) lanes and variable pricing. In a report due to be published in the March issue of the ITE JOURNAL the task force says that “HOT lanes in conjunction with value pricing can offer multiple benefits.”

The task force was chaired by Kenneth Orski, transp policy consultant and publisher of the URBAN MOBILITY newsletter and comprised Katherine Turnbull and William Stockton of the Texas Transp Inst and Ed Sullivan, Calif Poly State Univ San Luis Obispo. It consulted with eight practitioners and specialists in the field.

Benefits from variably priced HOT lanes cited in the report are:

• improving HOV lane utilization

• or, restoring free flow on over-heavily used HOV lanes

• reducing congestion on parallel mixed flow lanes

• generating additional revenues for transp corridor improvements

• providing premium travel options in heavily congested highway corridors

“User benefits include time savings, increased reliability (of travel), reduced stress and greater safety,” the report concludes. It urges additional demonstration projects to enhance understanding of the benefits of HOT lanes and value pricing.

The report says that the best prospects for HOT lanes are in (1) new facilities associated with major corridor reconstruction and (2) in existing severely underutilized HOV facilities in heavily congested corridors. It specifies the toll buy-in aspect of HOT as “the most logical” where current or anticipated volume of high occupancy vehicles does not exceed 500 vehicles/hour/lane.

On the toll structure the report says a variety of flexible pricing schemes are possible so long as tolls are set to attract solo drivers up to the point where the lanes start to become overloaded. The greatest opportunity for revenue generation, it says, will come from projects with 2 HOT lanes in each direction. The report says that criticism needs to be anticipated and where invalid “should be vigorously challenged.” The report says survey data shows a broad mix of vehicles using HOT lanes and only moderate income differences between users and non-users of HOT lanes.

The report suggests some new semantic distinctions. It proposes a distinction between “congestion pricing” and “value pricing” whereby the former involves charging every motorist on a highway a toll related to the level of congestion. Value pricing by contrast should be used to describe the charging of a congestion-related toll in a context of choice — between paying the toll for premium free flow service on special lanes and of using adjacent free if congested lanes.

It justifies the adjective value in “value pricing” as describing the value a motorist who pays the toll can see by comparing his journey with that of cars in the overloaded and slow-moving free lanes. (The term is credited to Calif Private Transp Co the operator of 91-Express.

Value pricing is defined as “a system of optional fees paid by solo drivers to gain access to dedicated road facilities providing a superior level of service and offering time savings compared to parallel mixed flow facilities.”

Value pricing can be applied to HOT lanes or to straight toll lanes.

The report is extraordinary in the clarity of its expression, and in its precision, and is a major contribution to the literature of transp policy. (Institute of Transp Engineers 202 554 8050)