Self-adaptive tolling strategy for enhanced high-occupancy toll lane operations

In this paper, a self-adaptive tolling strategy (SATS) is developed for dynamically and systematically enhancing highoccupancy toll (HOT) lane system operations. This strategy enhances the overall system performance of both the HOT and general purpose (GP) lanes by better utilizing the HOT lane capacity while maintaining high speed and/or high travel-time reliability for HOT lane traffic when GP lanes are congested. To formulate SATS, the Lighthill-Whitham- Richards kinematic wave model is used to characterize HOT lane traffic flow evolution, and the unilateral Laplace transform is used to convert the system representation from the time domain to the frequency domain. Then, an adaptive tolling controller is designed with both the proportional and integral control components. Real-time traffic measurements, including lane occupancy, average speed, and flow rate, are utilized for toll rate calculations. Following a dual-phase control scheme, the appropriate flow rate for HOT lane utilization is computed, and the corresponding toll is estimated backward. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed tolling strategy, microscopic traffic simulation experiments are conducted using VISSIM. The experiment results demonstrate that the proposed tolling strategy performs reasonably well in improving the overall operations of HOT lane systems under various traffic conditions.