Abstract
This paper reviews the pricing of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes and finds that 1) existing dynamic pricing adjusts every 3-15 minutes according to such parameters as speed, density, and/or volume, 2) tolls increase progressively with traffic to ensure free flow HOT lanes, 3) for multi-zone HOT lanes, tolls tend to be determined by the most congested zone, 4) the reaction of motorists to toll adjustments is either unspecified or oversimplified, and 5) a toll boundary is essential to mediate extreme fluctuations. Based on values of time savings and reliability, a novel toll scheme was proposed as a function of speed of general-purpose lanes; tolls in a selected 10-mile HOT corridor varied between $0.77 and $12.64 per use, of which the value of reliability accounted for 24% to 44% while that of time savings accounted for the remainder. The proposed toll scheme can be applied to time-of-day or dynamic HOT pricing.
