Evaluating the Impacts of Time-of-Day Tolling on Indiana Roadways

Abstract

In recent decades, several agencies have implemented tolls on their highway, bridge, or tunnel infrastructure for purposes that include mitigation and revenue generation. The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) sought to investigate the feasibility of time-of-day tolling at a specific section of Indiana's highways, and therefore commissioned this research study. Recognizing that traditional ex ante methods of tolling evaluation such as surveys and public hearings are time intensive and costly, this project developed a simulation package to measure the expected impacts of TOD tolling in terms of revenue, travel delay, and welfare. The report developed an analytical model and accompanying software tool (a TOD tolling analysis pack) to capture the relationship between the time-of-day toll and route choice, and to evaluate quickly, the impacts of various TOD tolling scenarios. The research products help the analyst to easily visualize traffic flows on roadways and to estimate the revenue, monetary savings, travel times, speeds, vehicle hours of travel, vehicle miles of travel, and welfare in response to different scenarios. The TOD tolling analysis pack reduces drastically, the time and effort in evaluating proposed TOD tolling initiatives for the future. The visualization features illustrate traffic diversions due to tolling implementation and display the most impacted road segments. Further, the TOD tolling analysis pack can be integrated seamlessly with INDOT's existing TransCAD models and with Google Maps to provide users with the capability of acquiring additional pertinent information on the study area.