Get Year-3 traffic in Month-6 - Central Texas bypasses "ramp up"

Central Texas may be a hotbed of anti-toll activism but motorists there love the tollroads. Traffic and revenue on the four pikes that have opened this year is way above expectations. In six months on the 183A tollroad they are meeting third year traffic and revenue forecasts.

Tollers in Austin seem to have found a way to bypass the dread "ramp up" that has afflicted many new tollroads in their first several years - from the Dulles Greenway VA to the Suncoast Parkway FL and the 91 Express Lanes CA. At five to ten years old these tollroads tend to be closer to forecast but they had horrible startup numbers for three or four years.

Take the Central Texas RMA and its 183A tollroad. Since full toll rates have been in effect 183A has been pulling in $1.2m to $1.3m/month. On that basis it should gross $15m in its first year. The Vollmer Stantec forecast for the first full calender year (2008) was $10.3m. 2009 was forecast at $13.9m.

Daily transactions are running in the range 55k to 65k weekdays. That includes violations whereas the Vollmer numbers are paid tolls. Still they are in forecast-2009/2010 year territory already.

"The traffic is very strong," says CTRMA spokesman Steve Pustelnyk. "We are very pleased. A lot of people are enjoying the benefits of faster, safer, less stressful travel."

Last Friday on this new tollroad in the northwest part of the Austin area they did 63k transactions.

CTRMA don't think the traffic forecasts they got from Vollmer Stantec are flawed on the low side. They think that the marketing model they and TxDOT adopted in Austin has allowed them to bypass "ramp-up" and jump straight to a trend traffic level.

Getting motorists to try the road

Their marketing model:

March: free rides for all
April: more free rides for all
May: cash tolls start, 3rd month free for tags
June: full cash tolls, tags 50% of cash tolls
July on: full cash tolls, tags 90% of cash rate

Pustelnyk says: "We really believe that this introductory period got motorists used to the advantages of the road, then by delaying tolls for tag accounts we persuaded a lot of people to get tags. We've got levels of transponder usage in the early months that are probably unprecedented in the industry. We had good marketing and good distribution."

Transactions with the Texas DOT sticker tag transponders under the TxTag brand name are doing close to 80% of CTRMA transactions. They need high levels of transponder use. One of their mainline toll points called Lakeline tolling traffic to the south is transponder-only. But they are getting 74% transponder use at the Park Street mainline plaza. It has three open road electronic toll lanes each direction plus a bunch of manned cash lanes. Ramp toll lanes have coin machines and transponder lanes.

Last Friday transactions were:
Lakeline 29k
Park Street 26.6k
Ramps 7.5k
Transactions 63k

When the roads were completely free the volume of toll-point passes was about 105k, so with tolls they are keeping about 60%, about the normal retention rate.

Most trips involve two tolls so the point flows are around 30k. Traffic on the old SH183 signalized arterial close by was 53k in February and another parallel road 30k, so the new tollroad seems to be attracting about a third of corridor volumes. CTRMA plans another round of traffic counts shortly to see exactly where their traffic is coming from.

Pustelnyk says with strong traffic numbers they are looking at the feasibility of accelerating Phase 2.

Phase 1 costing $238m involved 6.6km (4.1 miles) of 2x3 lane tollroad and 12.1km (7.5 miles) of frontage roads with four signalized intersections and space reserved in the center for 2x3 lanes of toll expressway. Phase 2 would build the toll lanes in the center making the tollroad proper 18.7km (11.6 miles).

Given the high uptake of transponders CTRMA is also examining abandonment of cash toll collection.

TxDOT's three TRs booming also

TxDOT too say their three roads in the Austin area - SH130, SH45 and Loop 1 - are also doing well beyond forecast volumes of traffic: about 130k/weekday compared to about 80k/weekday forecast, a 63% excess. (Numbers released in July.)

They used the same introductory incentives to use of their tollroads as CTRMA.

see http://www.ctrma.org

TOLLROADSnews 2007-08-27