Toll System Research Articles

ANALYSIS OF THE POSSIBILITIES OF BUILDING A TOLL SYSTEM IN KOŠICE

Of course, transport has also the adverse effects that cause the costs to society and the economy. Therefore, charging for transport must better reflect the actual cost of shipping. The external costs associated with the use of infrastructure vary depending on time and place e.g. traffic congestion, air pollution, noise and accidents. Applying differentiated fees is a way to take these changes into account. Public acceptance will probably be one of the biggest problems in implementing the Kosice tolling system. It will depend on how the system will be presented, whether as a separate measure without a system specification and without explanation, where will the incomes go or what other measures will be related to the system. However, most of the people probably would oppose its introduction. Probably the most appropriate strategy of introduction of the toll system in Kosice will be the strategy of improving overall traffic situation in the city. If this system will be fair, beneficial and transparent for all participants, the chance of acceptance is much higher.

Economic Impacts of Introducing Tolls for Heavy-Goods Vehicles

This paper focuses on the wider economic and environmental impacts of introducing or expanding road toll systems for heavy-goods vehicles in selected Spanish provinces and how these impacts compare with those of the German toll system. For this purpose, literature and statistical analyses are supported by applications of the European system dynamics model, ASTRA-EC, and stakeholder interviews. The main conclusions of this study are that positive as well as negative impacts of road pricing systems are often overestimated. Enhancing the environmental friendliness of truck fleets through differentiated tariffs and the generation of additional funds for roads and other investments are positive arguments for toll systems. However, the review of existing systems and transport model applications showed limited to negligible effects on the competitiveness of the transport sector, logistics patterns, modal shares, and wider economic impacts with the current charge levels in Germany and Spain. Some specific user groups, such as small- and medium-sized transport enterprises based in peripheral locations, would face considerable difficulties. The success of newly revised truck tolling regimes depends heavily on local conditions, the design of tariffs, the revenues spent, and active participation by stakeholders.

Examining Changes in GDP on the Demand for Road Freight Transport

The paper deals with the analysis of long-term development of GDP, while it is per 1 capita in Slovakia and neighboring countries. This development will be further compared with the economies of developed countries. This paper also parse the vehicle fleet of road transport and examines the burden on the road network. This is based on statistical data from the Slovak Road Administration and information from the toll system since 2009. The paper also examine the load of roads in the factory Kia Motors Slovakia by road freight transport. The output of paper are recommendations for the development of transport infrastructure, road and rail transport in terms of sustainable development.

Effects of the change of toll system on social surplus: A case study of distance-based toll in Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway

Abstract We examines the effects of the change of toll system on the economic efficiency, focusing on a case of Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway, i.e., Shutoko, whose toll system had shifted from flat toll to distance-based toll. Drivers using the parallel general road are considered, and they are to pay the fuel tax to the government. We calculated the social surplus comprised of the consumers’ surplus and the producers’ surplus among both the highway company and the government. Furthermore, it is shown that the Ramsey pricing rule could increase the social surplus while toll receipts of the highway company being unchanged.

Large-scale, high-fidelity dynamic traffic assignment: framework and real-world case studies

We present a highly detailed, microscopic Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) framework with sufficient fidelity to address emergent and future planning and operations applications. Congestion patterns are estimated at the lane level with explicit modeling of complex signal timing algorithms and their impacts on queues and spillbacks. A Geographic Information System (GIS) ensures the most accurate network representation. The flexible representation of travel demand at the resolution of individual vehicles facilitates the capturing of sufficient vehicle and driver classes, vehicle performance and driving behavior distributions, inter-vehicle interactions, and temporally fine trajectories. Model outputs are saved at any desired granularity, and may be used to assess entire distributions of performance metrics to support reliability studies. Applications of the framework include the study of connected vehicles, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), advanced tolling systems, and emissions modeling, and safety analysis. The above features are implemented with unparalleled computational performance so that large-scale networks may be handled without the need for accuracy-running time tradeoffs. We describe four real-world projects that clearly demonstrate the advantages of the microscopic DTA in practice.

Accurate and Cost-Effective Traffic Information Acquisition using Adaptive Sampling: Centralized and V2V Schemes

Abstract: The new generation of GPS-based tolling systems allow for a much higher degree of road sensing than has been available up to now. We propose an adaptive sampling scheme to collect accurate real-time traffic information from large-scale implementations of on-board GPS-based devices over a road network. The goal of the system is to minimize the transmission costs over all vehicles while satisfying requirements in the accuracy and timeliness of the traffic information obtained. The system is designed to make use of cellular communication as well as leveraging additional technologies such as roadside units equipped with WiFi and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) dedicated short-range communications (DSRC). As opposed to fixed sampling schemes, which transmit at regular intervals, the sampling policy we propose is adaptive to the road network and the importance of the links that the vehicle traverses. Since cellular communications are costly, in the basic centralized scheme, the vehicle is not aware of the road conditions on the network. We extend the scheme to handle non-cellular communications via roadside units and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. Under a general traffic model, we prove that our scheme always outperforms the baseline scheme in terms of transmission cost while satisfying accuracy and real-time requirements. Our analytical results are further supported via simulations based on actual road networks for both the centralized and V2V settings.

Competition and Coordination in Two‐Tier Public Service Systems under Government Fiscal Policy

As a result of government budgetary limits and rapid market growth, many public service systems—such as health care—are characterized by extensive customer wait times that have become a serious problem. This problem might be solved by allowing private firms to enter these markets, which would provide customers with a choice between a free (governmental) public service provider (SP) and a fee‐charging (or “toll”) private SP. In such a two‐tier service system, the two SPs are differentiated by service quality and cost efficiency. This study focuses on the competition and coordination issues for two‐tier service systems with customers who are sensitive to both service quality and delay. The free system attempts to maximize its expected total customer utility with limited capacity, whereas the toll system attempts to maximize its profit. Neither goal is aligned with the social welfare goal of the public service. To achieve the social welfare goal, the government plays a crucial role in coordinating the two‐tier service system via the budget, the tradeoff of social members' goals, and tax‐subsidy policies. Using a mixed duopoly game, we establish Nash equilibrium strategies and identify the conditions for the existence of the two‐tier service system. We employ several interesting and counter‐intuitive managerial insights generated by the model to show that the public service can be delivered more efficiently via customer choice and SP competition. In addition, we show that a relatively low tax‐subsidy rate can almost perfectly coordinate the two SPs to achieve most of the maximum possible benefit of the two‐tier service system.

Privacy-preserving electronic road pricing system for low emission zones with dynamic pricing

The high levels of pollution and traffic congestion present in almost all major cities around the world have brought solutions such as the deployment of electronic toll systems in some of these cities. The main purpose of those electronic toll systems is to restrict the access of vehicles to certain city areas, named low emission zones. Since its adoption, this solution has proven to be quite promising. However, current proposals are still far from being ideal. More specifically, current schemes still introduce a significant error percentage in the detection of fraudulent drivers. Moreover, they usually require toll systems to be equipped with cameras that take pictures of all the vehicles that pass through the control points. This behavior may represent a serious privacy threat for the drivers. In this article, a new electronic toll system is proposed. The aim of the new proposal is to detect fraud while preserving drivers privacy. More concretely, it provides a non-probabilistic fraud control, and the control points only take pictures of the vehicles that misbehave. Last but not least, the proposed system applies an enhanced dynamic pricing that can help the authorities to better distribute traffic over the road network. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Economic valuation of Well-To-Wheel CO2 emissions from freight transport along the main transalpine corridors

CO2 emissions are one of the main externalities related to freight transport. Their evaluation is extremely difficult, due to the presence of several scientific and economic uncertainties. This paper discusses the approaches currently adopted by literature to deal with CO2, proposing a methodology based on a Well-To-Wheel quantification and an economic valuation deriving from a meta-regression. A freight transport analysis is then provided for one of the most critical areas of Europe, the Alps. Here, the different approaches adopted by the single nations determine divergent results in terms of modal shift towards rail and, consequently, CO2 emissions. An integrated and transnational strategy could lead to better results, avoiding detoured traffic and increasing the share of railway traffic. To this aim, the carbon impacts of three specific alpine-wide measures are evaluated: namely, Alpine Crossing Exchange, Emissions Trading and Differentiated Toll System. In comparison with business-as-usual scenario, the case study reveals a potential CO2 saving up to more than 600,000tons and 38M€ for the year 2030, thus providing policy makers with an integrative transnational tool able to evaluate the long-term carbon impact of their transport decisions.

Electronic Toll Collection Systems and their Interoperability: The State of Art

The European Electronic Toll Service (EETS) was created in 2004 with the aim of ensuring interoperability among the existing electronic toll collection (ETC) systems in Europe. However, the lack of cooperation between groups of stakeholders has not made possible to achieve this goal ten years later. The purpose of this research is to determine the better way to achieve interoperability among the different ETC systems in Europe. Our study develops a review of the six main ETC systems available worldwide: Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Satellite systems (GNSS), Tachograph, and Mobile communications tolling systems. The research also provides some insight on different emerging technologies. By focusing on different operational and strategic aspects offered by each technology, we identify their main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and makes different recommendations to improve the current framework. The research concludes that given the diversity of advantages and inconveniences offered by each system, the selection of a certain ETC technology should also take into account its potential to overcome the weaknesses in the current ETC framework. In this line, different policy recommendations are proposed to improve the present ETC strategy at the EU. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/CIT2016.2016.3186

Social welfare analysis of investment public–private partnership approaches for transportation projects

This paper has two objectives: (i) to introduce a new approach in order to gain widespread support for road pricing; and (ii) to develop a detailed social welfare analysis for road pricing schemes. We first describe our novel approach that stimulates public support for road pricing, which we refer to as an investment public–private partnership, or IP3. This approach returns a significant portion of the economic value created by road pricing back to the citizens who own the newly priced facility. We then present a social welfare framework that estimates the benefits and costs of using the IP3 approach on an urban transportation network. A P3 project’s impact on overall social welfare provides a more comprehensive evaluation criterion than the often-used Value for Money (VfM) analysis. Apart from several theoretical studies, a detailed social welfare analysis that includes all major P3 project stakeholders is absent from the literature. We use Fresno, California as our case study in order to conduct a welfare analysis on IP3s. Our results show that system-optimal tolling favors average users, but that government—and consequently taxpayers—should pay for costly tolling systems (negative profits). In contrast, unlimited profit-maximizing tolls raise substantial profits for government, for the infrastructure’s citizen-owners, and for the private sector, but the average user is worse off. From a social-welfare perspective, one should search for a Pareto improvement under which all major stakeholders are better off. Our estimates indicate that a mixed public and private tolling scheme offers such an improvement.

Multipurpose Card Using Rfid Technology

Most often in our daily life we have to carry lot of cards such as credit cards, debit cards and some other special cards for toll system ERP, parking and personal identification purpose. Currently smart card implementations can be seen around the world but they are not unified i.e. each developers uses different programming standards and data structures. The smart card will provide service to the user only within a university campus or an organization. In order to make available such multiple application access using a single card to every individual person we have planned to use RFID technology, which is cost effective. As RFID technology is used in the proposed concept, the programming standards and data structures will be unified. Unlike smart card, the RFID card can be used by every individual person to access different applications. Thus, a person needs not to carry number of cards; he can just carry a single card for different purpose. KeywordsSmart card; not unified: Multiple application access; Single card; RFID technology; Cost effective

Effects of Change in Toll Systems on Social Surplus: A Case Study of Distance-based Tolls on Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway

Effects of Change in Toll Systems on Social Surplus: A Case Study of Distance-based Tolls on Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway

Integrating Automated Toll Discounts into a Real-Time Ridesharing Program

A pilot program in Austin, Texas, tested the practicality of integration of a real-time ridesharing application with a toll operator to process toll discounts for carpools. The toll discounts appeared on monthly toll transaction statements. The program lasted for almost a year on the 183A Toll Road and the US-290 Manor Expressway. Travelers used a smartphone application to track, record, and submit their trips for discounts. Two-person carpools that used the application received a 50% discount, and carpools of three or more people could travel toll free. The program was a partnership between the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, the local toll system operator, and a private ridesharing vendor. Back-office processes matched trip data from the smartphone application to transactions recorded by the toll systems. A total of 95 unique drivers were provided toll rebates for 2,213 trips during the 10.5-month period of the pilot program. During the pilot program, rebates were provided for most trips by two-person carpools. Individual driver behavior varied considerably. A select few drivers had a high number of carpool trips, whereas others took a sporadic trip or infrequent trips. Drivers took a median of seven trips during the pilot program. Future ridesharing programs should consider showing higher-dollar-value rebates that represent annual savings to incentivize ridesharing behavior. Timely feedback to users was found to be an important goal for success. In addition, program sponsors should provide positive customer service and engage users when problems that are not under their direct purview exist.

Liberalization of the Railway Freight Market in the Context of a Sustainable Transport System

Transport is one of the most important economic sectors; it directly employs around 10 million people and it is concerned in GDP approximately 5% in the European Union (EU). The White Paper of 2011 underlines the need to create new traffic models that will make it possible to meet increasing demands for services through the effective use of various modes of transport and multimodal chains to reduce the external costs of transport. One of the important tools required to ensure sustainable transport is the liberalization of the railway freight transport market, whose main objective is to increase the competitiveness of railway transport reducing the negative impacts of transport on the environment. Actual problems from the view of sustainable transport are mainly those to do with in limited capacity and the level of transport infrastructure and the major differences between the capacity and quality of transport infrastructure in Western and Eastern Europe. The aim of our research is to design measures for the creation of free and undisturbed competition in freight transport to reduce the use of public resources, improving the quality of service even while reducing the social costs of transport. Support for this primary goal will be represented by the definition and description of the complex characteristics of: traffic flows and demand on logistic systems, multimodal chain, business conditions in the transport market, the role of managers of the railway infrastructure in the railway market, system of tolls of the railway infrastructure in terms of minimum access package and additional services in selected EU countries, the social costs of transport, including quantification of external effects, natural and value indicators in relation to the quality of transport processes. The paper deals with research conditions of the liberalization of the railway freight market in the context of a sustainable transport system. We have analysed the charging of the railway infrastructure in the V4 countries and Austria in order to compare charges for model trains. The paper presents a comparative analysis of the number of rail freight operators in individual countries vs rail freight transport performance. Based on this analysis, we investigated whether the liberalization of the rail freight market is reflected in the modal split for the benefit of rail transport.

Driving Simulation of the Safety and Operation Performance at a Freeway Toll Plaza

Toll plaza designs have implemented electronic toll collection and other technologies to improve toll systems; however, an increase in crashes has appeared with these improvements. To study safely the pertinent aspects of driver behavior in toll plazas with electronic toll collection, a cockpit driving simulator housed at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez was used. Specifically, in this study a comparison was made of two configurations of the signs that indicated the corresponding speed limit and toll station for each lane in the area before the toll plaza. One configuration corresponded to the current condition of the signage in Puerto Rico, with signs located at the roadside; the second configuration presented a proposed overhead signage treatment. A representative group of 20 subjects was selected to test the effectiveness of the two signage configurations on the approach zone leading to the toll plaza, calculating the standard deviation of roadway position, speed, and acceleration noise in five zones. The behavior of drivers using the proposed signage configuration appeared to be safer than the behavior of drivers following the current signage configuration. Specifically, at each of five zones in which behavior was sampled on the approach to the toll plaza, drivers using the proposed configuration changed lanes more smoothly and reduced their vehicles’ velocity more when approaching the toll plaza. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference between configurations in acceleration noise. The results of this study provide strong evidence that driving simulators can be used effectively to identify efficient and inexpensive alternative signage configurations at toll plazas.

Traffic Flow Optimization on Freeways

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) are advanced technologies and applications integrated in transportation networks with the aim of creating a safe and efficient transportation environment. ITSs are developing both in the cities, that will become smart cities, and on freeways, by designing smart roads. Focusing on freeways, tollbooths currently represent serious challenges in many countries. Most commonly used payment toll systems create traffic congestion with the consequent increase of traffic pollution, time delays and negative results in terms of vehicular throughput and freeways’ efficiency. ITSs integrated with new arriving Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) and novel toll collections designs, such as Open Road Tolling (ORT), could remove, or at least, mitigate these bottlenecks. This paper presents traffic flow models and algorithms implemented in IBM ILOG CPLEX Optimization Studio. Modeling and comprehensive investigation, using real data, brings advantages in terms of traffic throughput and optimization.

Microsimulation-Based Real-Time Congestion Pricing Strategy for Managed Lane

A real-time toll that accurately reflects the congestion and delays of a system enhances a high-occupancy toll (HOT) lane system. This paper extends an existing system-optimal real-time congestion pricing strategy by relaxing the assumption of constant capacity, which allows one to implement the strategy on a dynamic microsimulation of the HOT lane, whose capacity and that of general purpose lanes vary because of the weaving activity at the end of the HOT lane. It was found that the proposed model was superior in total delay savings, particularly when bottleneck capacities varied significantly. A clear linear relationship was also found between the pricing coefficient and dimensionless delays and the pricing coefficient and revenue. These findings strengthen the system-optimal linear toll pricing strategy and suggest that departments of transportation can implement practical toll systems that incorporate the real-time discharge rates of bottlenecks.

Selection of Suitable Urban Tolling System Technology

Article deals with the selection of suitableselection urban tolling system technology. In the paper, a lot of aspects, which have an influence on selection of particular technology in city conditions, were considered. For example: charging policy, user aspects, technical aspects and economic aspects. Although the analysis was not performed within specific conditions of a particular city, it was found out that in spite of general analysis, it is possible to form relevant and rather clear conclusions.

Impact Analysis of Toll Policy for Expressway to Variable Traffic Demand for Local City with Integrated User Equilibrium Assignment Model

The reconfigure of expressway toll system is discussed from the view of economic effect to the local area recently. It is the purpose of the present study that the impact to the traffic demand and the traffic flow in the local city are estimated quantitatively for the proper evaluation of the toll policy. Therefore, the integrated user equilibrium assignment model is proposed for impact analysis of toll policy on expressway to local city. The demand function between the objective area and the outside area estimated considering with base site. The demand functions are integrated to the user equilibrium assignment model with variable demand. Finally, the traffic demand for the typical toll policies can be estimated and the impact to the traffic flow in the objective area can be analyzed with the proposed model.