TESTING ALTERNATIVE METHODS TO CALCULATE USER TOLLS ON I-95 EXPRESS LANES

Nowadays, there is increasing number of facilities that implement various pricing strategies in order to manage increasing traffic demand. Most of these strategies use traffic data collected on several points in the system, aggregate them in certain aggregation interval and calculate tolls based on them. Some strategies derive performance measures (as traffic density) based on aggregated data, and define tolls. However, derived performance measures tend to underestimate traffic conditions and data aggregation interval can smooth traffic data. On the other hand, travel time has not been utilized in order to calculate user tolls on such systems, and yet it can directly measure users delay in the system, and directly capture field conditions. In addition, technology to collect travel times is becoming more popular and used in transportation systems. Hence, this study aims to test alternative methods for toll calculation that will rely on travel time data and compare their performance with currently utilized toll calculation algorithm on I-95 Express lanes in South Florida.