Development of an Effectiveness Analysis Tool for Freeway Tollgate Entrance Control

Abstract

This paper aims at developing an active expressway entrance control effectiveness analysis tool which operators can utilize and manage traffic based on current traffic condition. For this, after identifying the current problems of tollgate-based entrance policy being used, a new set of decision element such as congestion index, decision criteria for congestion, and congestion management unit has been proposed together with the procedure of newly developed tollgate control policy. Three key parts developed are traffic condition identification module, tollgate metering module, and travel speed calculation module. Some measures of effectiveness were also identified and the newly developed effectiveness analysis tool produced better result. According to classification of traffic condition by reference speed as 80km/h, the improved tollgate entrance procedure increased 21.5% in average travel speed compared with Do-Nothing case and also increased 8.8% compared with current entrance control method.