A Study on User Acceptable Road Pricing Policy for Toll Roads: A Case of Eethakota, India

Abstract

User’s acceptability and perceptions are the important issues for the successful implementation of road pricing schemes. In a developing country like India, the toll collection is switching from Manual Toll Collection (MTC) to the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) and Open Road Tolling. A better understanding of perceptions and acceptability on different road pricing schemes can help transport planners and decision makers to know the public support for road pricing schemes before and after implementation. A questionnaire based survey has been used to explore perceptions and acceptability of road pricing schemes such as High Occupancy toll (HOT), Dynamic Toll Pricing (DTP), Distance based pricing etc. For the present study, the sample of 550 respondents has been taken with the help of an online platform and face to face interview. The results show that about 41.18 percent of the users are willing to use the distance-based pricing scheme. The study developed multinomial logit model to analyse the acceptability of different pricing schemes. The results show that there are significant differences in user acceptability by the type of charging scheme proposed. HOT was most acceptable by users who perceive less travel time savings for using toll roads. The acceptability of DTP decreases for users who felt tolls are not an appropriate mechanism to fund roads. Number of toll booth passed is a significant parameter affecting acceptability of distance based pricing. In addition; socioeconomic variables also affect each of the pricing schemes. The signs of estimated parameters fit prior knowledge and are statically significant.The outcome of the present study will provide a reference for providing a users’ acceptable pricing scheme in India.