Potential Single-Occupancy Vehicle Demand for High-Occupancy Vehicle Lanes

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the use of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes as an alternative to high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to help manage the increasing demand for travel. HOT lanes combine pricing and vehicle occupancy restrictions to optimize the demand for HOV lanes. As two of the five HOT lanes in the world, the HOT lane facilities in Houston, Texas, require peak period travelers in vehicles with two occupants to pay a toll to use the lanes. During other periods of the day, two-occupant vehicles can use the lanes for free. Single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs) are never allowed. There was an opportunity to increase the usage of these HOT lanes by allowing SOV travelers to use the lanes during the off-peak periods, for an appropriate toll. This research examined the potential SOV demand for HOV lane use during the off-peak periods from the Katy Freeway and Northwest Freeway general purpose lane travelers. Of course, allowing SOVs on the HOV lanes is a multifaceted policy decision that has not been tackled by the operating agencies, and this research simply estimates the demand if such an option existed. This included estimating two important factors that influenced travelers’ potential use of the HOV lanes: their value of travel time savings (VTTS) and their value of penalty for changing their travel schedule (VPCS). It was found that respondents had VTTS approximately 45% of their hourly wage rate and VPCS approximately 3% of their hourly wage rate. Combining this information with current travel time savings and available capacity on the HOV lanes, it was found that approximately 2,000 SOV travelers per day would pay a combined total of $4,500 to use the HOV lanes during the off-peak periods.