Enforcement Strategies for High-Occupancy-Toll Lanes

Abstract

Managed lanes, specifically High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes and Express lanes, in combination with variable pricing, hold the key to managing congestion on metropolitan area freeways, while allowing for improved travel times for all vehicles and buses in the managed lanes. Effective enforcement of priced managed lanes is essential to maintain the free-flow speeds and to guarantee a stable revenue stream, but present a number of challenges, in the form of engineering requirements, costs and public acceptance. After a review of manual enforcement strategies and its limitations, this paper discusses various types of electronic technology available for toll collection and enforcement. The benefits of shifting to a hybrid manual and electronic enforcement strategy are emphasized, specifically in the context of Atlanta. As Atlanta is gearing up to implement its first High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) to HOT conversion demonstration project on the I-85 Northeast corridor, the enforcement strategies proposed will play a key role in its success. Due to the lack of roadway space for physical barrier separation and limited police enforcement pull-off areas, the enforcement strategies will rely on deployment of an “invisible barrier” system called, Gantry Controlled Access (GCA), to prevent vehicles from improper access/egress from the HOT lanes that are delineated with double white line pavement markings. This paper demonstrates the advantages of a hybrid HOT enforcement strategy, given currently available technologies (Mobile Enforcement Readers (MER) and mobile Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)) and enforcement methods with Atlanta’s engineering constraints.

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