Socioeconomic Assessment

Abstract

High-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes use dynamic pricing to manage demand for lane use and to maintain acceptable traffic flow and traffic speeds. However, minimum occupancy and toll payment requirements raise potential socioeconomic questions concerning disparate negative effects across demographic groups. The objective of this study was to improve the knowledge about socioeconomic aspects of congestion pricing by using the I-85 high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) to HOT conversion in Atlanta, Georgia, as a case study. To evaluate the effects across user groups, more than 1.5 million license plate records were collected during a 2–year period, 1 year before and 1 year after the conversion. Analyses compared collected records with state motor vehicle registration databases to identify the vehicles and link census block group level and marketing household level socioeconomic attributes. In addition, results of a 2-day travel diary survey conducted by Volpe 6 months before and 6 months after the conversion were assessed. This study used all three sources of data in parallel to undertake a socioeconomic evaluation of the HOV-to-HOT conversion. Whereas previous studies were built on only one data source with significantly smaller sample sizes, the use of three distinctive sources of socioeconomic data and an exceptionally large sample size advanced the understanding of the potential socioeconomic effects of managed lanes. Furthermore, with the noted advantages and disadvantages of these data sources, this study provided valuable insight for general demographic analysts.

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