Reliable capacity of electronic toll collection lanes

Abstract

For proper planning, design and operation of an electronic highway toll facility, the capacity of the toll lane is an important aspect that needs to be considered. Although the capacities of roads and intersections are generally referred to as stochastic in nature, toll lane capacity is still considered as a deterministic value. A study was undertaken into the variation in service headway and thus reliability related to capacity values for toll lanes. Videographic traffic data were collected at three electronic toll plazas in India. The service headway of cars was found to be lower compared to vehicles with trailers. A Monte Carlo simulation was used to generate the different variations that may occur in the service headway owing to supply-side and demand-side changes. Finally, the capacity for 80%, 90% and 95% reliability was found as 494, 554 and 608 passenger cars per hour, respectively. The developed capacity values can be used to check the volume-to-capacity ratio in a mixed traffic lane and can be used to develop the level-of-service thresholds for electronic toll collection lanes in future studies.