High Occupancy Toll lane Performance Under Alternative Pricing Policies

This paper explores how alternative pricing and operating policies influence revenue generation, level of service, and travel time costs for high occupancy toll (HOT) lane facilities. A framework for modeling HOT lanes is applied to a hypothetical facility. The analysis suggests that the way in which tolls are set can have a non-trivial influence on competing measures of HOT lane performance. Other operating characteristics, such as the number of lanes designated as free and priced and whether carpools are allowed to ride free or must pay a toll to access the HOT lanes, are shown to significantly influence performance as well.