Potential single-occupancy vehicle demand for the Katy Freeway and Northwest Freeway high-occupancy vehicle lanes

Abstract

Since the 1960’s, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes have been successfully used as a\ntravel demand management technique. In recent years, there has been a growing interest\nin the use of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes as an alternative to HOV lanes to help\nmanage the increasing demand for travel. HOT lanes combine pricing and vehicle\noccupancy restrictions to optimize the demand for HOV lanes. As two of the four HOT\nlanes in the world, the HOT lane facilities in Houston, Texas received relatively low\npatronage after operating for over 6 years on the Katy Freeway and over 4 years on the\nNorthwest Freeway. There existed an opportunity to increase the usage of these HOT\nlanes by allowing single-occupancy vehicle (SOV) travelers to use the lanes, for an\nappropriate toll. The potential SOV demand for HOV lane use during the off-peak\nperiods from the Katy Freeway and Northwest Freeway general-purpose lane (GPL)\ntravelers was estimated in this study by using the data collected from a 2003 survey of\ntravelers on the Katy and Northwest Freeway GPLs who were not enrolled in\nQuickRide. Based on survey results, more travelers would choose to drive on the HOT lanes\nas SOV travelers during the off-peak periods when the facilities provided higher travel\ntime savings and charged lower tolls. Two important factors influencing travelers’ use\nof the HOV lanes were their value of travel time savings (VTTS) and penalty for\nchanging travel schedule (VPCS). It was found that respondents had VTTS\napproximately 43 percent of their hourly wage rate and VPCS approximately 3 percent\nof their hourly wage rate. Combining this information with current travel time savings\nand available capacity on the HOV lanes, it was found that approximately 2000 SOV\ntravelers per day would pay an average toll of $2.25 to use the HOV lanes during the\noff-peak periods.

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