Effect of Off-peak Hour Toll Reduction on Toll Roads

Abstract

A transport economic model was developed to evaluate changes in total travel costs on congested toll roads by dispersing peak-hour traffic to the pre-peak hours or post-peak hours with a toll discount. To empirically analyze the effectiveness of the early-morning and daytime toll discount, early departure cost and late arrival cost were estimated and traffic data of Metropolitan Expressway Route 3 was assigned. The result shows that an early-morning toll discount, shifting the peak-hour traffic to the pre-peak hours, produces a long-lasting effect of congestion mitigation starting from the peak-hours. It is empirically presented that an early-morning toll discount is effective in cutting travel costs.