High-Occupancy Toll Lane Decision Making: Income Effects on I-85 Express Lanes, Atlanta, Georgia

Abstract

The I-85 express lanes were the first value pricing facility in the Atlanta, Georgia, metropolitan region. This study investigated the behavior and decision making of users and nonusers of those high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes. The study used a unique combination of express lane data and household demographic data, obtained from a private marketing firm, to examine decision making at the trip level for users from different income segments and demographic clusters. Trip characteristics (e.g., toll amount and trip length, operating conditions on HOT and general purpose lanes) and socioeconomic characteristics (e.g., household income and size) were incorporated into the choice models. This study also provided a summary of express lane use characteristics by income segments and investigated trip speeds by lane types and income categories. Lane choice decisions were modeled with binary logit methods to examine potential determinants of HOT lane use. Households were segmented into lower-, medium-, and higher-income groups to illustrate the differences in responses across these categories. In addition, households were clustered by their demographic characteristics to compare lane choice determinants across similar households. Elasticities for the various factors were calculated. The results showed slightly higher rates of HOT use among the higher-income segment, inelastic demand sensitivities for most factors, and few differences between lane choice determinants across income groups. With goodness-of-fit values that ranged from .18 to .21, these disaggregate models left most lane choice variation unexplained.

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