Browsing by Subject "High occupancy toll lanes"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
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    Benefit and Cost Analysis of the I-394 MnPASS Program
    (Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2012-02) Cao, Xinyu (Jason); Munnich, Lee; Liu, Henry; He, Xiaozheng (Sean); Xu, Zhiyi; Huang, Yan (Arthur)
    In this report, we explored the benefits and costs associated with converting the I-394 High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes to High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes. The study focused on the I-394 corridor, with a 10-year timeframe from 2006 to 2015. The benefits included travel time savings, safety benefits, and vehicle operating cost savings, and the costs consisted of capital costs and annual operating costs. Where applicable, the implementation of this study followed the benefit-cost analysis guidance of MnDOT. This study considered the benefits of both travel time savings and travel time reliability and the valuations of travel time savings and reliability were derived from econometric models for individual drivers’ behavior. HOT lane users choose the lanes because of travel time savings and/or the reliability of the lanes whereas previous studies considered only travel time savings and exclusively relied on standardized economic value of travel time. This study estimated safety benefits from crash reduction using the Empirical Bayes method. Previous studies scarcely considered the benefits resulting from the conversion of HOV lanes to HOT lanes. This study also showed that “naïve” approaches tended to overstate safety benefits, which highlighted the importance of using a sound methodology.
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    Developing ITS to Serve Diverse Populations
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2006-11) Douma, Frank
    In 2003, the State and Local Policy Program (SLPP) at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs began research into how Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technologies can be used to deliver transportation services to an increasingly diverse population in Minnesota. The research objective was to identify the nature of the gap between the emerging needs and existing services, and to propose ways of using technology to bridge the gap, both in terms of providing better transportation options and in reducing the cost of these options. Using the information obtained from emerging demographic data, the 2003 study focused on identifying transportation challenges and opportunities for several different populations, with a particular focus on those that do not or cannot drive. This project continues this general theme through a series of analyses of ITS applications that appear most promising to improve mobility and access for Minnesota's increasingly diverse population. These applications include technologically advanced Community-Based Transit, Car Sharing, use of ITS to implement Value Pricing through conversion of an HOV lane to a High-Occupancy/Toll (HOT) lane, and evaluation of web-based Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS).
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    Evaluation of the Effect of MnPASS Lane Design on Mobility and Safety
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2014-06) Stanitsas, Panagiotis; Hourdos, John; Zitzow, Stephen
    Dynamically priced High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes have been recently added to the traffic operations arsenal in an attempt to preserve infrastructure investment in the future by maintaining a control on demand. This study focuses on the operational and design features of HOT lanes. HOT lanes’ mobility and safety are contingent on the design of zones (“gates”) that drivers use to merge in or out of the facility. Existing methodologies for the design of access zones are limited to engineering judgment or studies that take into consideration undersized amount of observations. Case in point is the fact that the design philosophes between the two HOT facilities in Minnesota are diametrically opposed. Specifically, the I-394 freeway, the first dynamically priced HOT lane, was designed with a closed access philosophy, meaning that for the greater length of the roadway access to the HOT lane is restricted with only specific short-length sections where access is allowed. In contrast I-35W, the second HOT corridor, was designed with an open access philosophy where lane changes between the HOT and the GPLs are allowed everywhere except for a few specific locations. This contradiction generated questions as to effect each case has on safety and mobility. This study presents an assessment of safety and mobility on the two facilities as they operate today and highlights the issues present on either design. In addition, two design tools were developed, the first assisting in the optimal design of access zones based on traffic measurements, and the second allowing the assessment of the influence congested General Purpose Lanes can have on the mobility and safety of the HOT under different traffic conditions and utilization due to changes in pricing strategy.
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    I-394 Phase II Planning Study
    (Center for Transportation Studies, 2010-07) Munnich, Lee W. Jr.; Buckeye, Kenneth
    The I-394 MnPASS Phase II Planning Study was a multi-agency collaboration that evaluated four major study elements and their relationships in a congestion priced urban corridor. These included transit, land use, infrastructure and telecommuting. A foundation for this work was the understanding that high-cost capacity expansions were not likely to occur in the corridor for 25 to 30 years despite forecasts of increasing congestion that may threaten efficiency gains achieved with conversion of the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to high- occupancy toll (HOT) lane operation. Recommendations identified in this study are being used to guide investments in corridor facilities and services by transportation authorities and will also be used by communities adjacent to the corridor. Transit supportive land use recommendations, if implemented, can help ensure that a high level of service is maintained in the corridor for all users. While specific funding for implementation of these recommendations was not identified prior to the planning process, several compelling transit, land use and telecommuting recommendations are currently being advanced for programming. This project is a valuable case study and potential model for linking land use, transit, telecommuting and congestion pricing in a high-demand urban corridor.
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    Interstate 35E MnPASS Managed Lanes Extension: Little Canada Road to County Road 96 Pre-Implementation Study
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2015-06) Douma, Frank
    This report summarizes work to study the feasibility of extending MnPASS Express Lanes on I-35E between Little Canada Road and County Road 96 in the northeastern part of the Twin Cities metropolitan area. During peak rush hour periods, MnPASS Express Lanes provide a congestion-free option to transit vehicles, carpools and motorcycles, as well as single-occupant vehicles for a fee. The work was funded by a Value Pricing Pilot Program grant from the Federal Highway Administration. This was a pre-implementation planning study designed to develop and evaluate conceptual alternatives for extending MnPASS Express Lanes between Little Canada Road and County Road 96 on I-35E and to identify and evaluate methods for improving bus transit and carpool use in the MnPASS lanes on I-35E. The study sought to explore and analyze a number of scenarios to provide a higher level of service for all I-35E corridor users: those using the general purpose traffic lanes, those using the MnPASS Express Lanes, and those using transit. The goal for the project was to achieve greater efficiency in the corridor through better use of existing infrastructure and to optimize highway system performance and customer service through supportive land-use planning for transit and bike/pedestrian traffic. The study engaged community stakeholders and corridor users to analyze the design, operations, benefits, costs, and public acceptability of each conceptual alternative. The study also engaged community stakeholders in identifying and evaluating additional transit enhancements that could increase transit and carpool use in the I-35E MnPASS Express Lanes. Note: Appendix H (land use study) is a separate document and listed under the report PDF.
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    MnPASS Modeling and Pricing Algorithm Enhancement
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2015-05) Hourdos, John; Janson, Michael; Levinson, David; Parikh, Gordon
    While High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes have been used for decades as a strategy for mitigating congestion, research has shown that they are not always effective. A 2001 study of the I-394 and I-35W HOV lanes in Minnesota found that the HOV lanes were on average underutilized, moving fewer people than the General-Purpose Lanes (GPL) even with the increased number of passengers per vehicle. To address the issue of underuse, in 2003 the Minnesota Legislature authorized the conversion of the I-394 HOV lanes into High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes, named the MnPASS Express Lanes. The MnPASS lanes operate using a fully dynamic pricing schedule, where pricing is dictated by the level of congestion in the HOT lane. To better understand the nature of HOT lanes and the decisions of their users, this study explored the possibilities for a microscopic traffic simulation-based model of HOT lanes. Based on a series of field studies where the price of the toll was changed while observing changes in demand in the HOT lane, models describing the lane choice behavior of MnPASS users were developed and calibrated. These models interfaced with the traffic simulation software Aimsun through a number of extension modules and tested on the two MnPASS corridors of I-394 and I35W corridors in the west and south suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The integrated HOT simulation tool was also used to develop and test a number of alternative pricing strategies including a more efficient version of the current strategy.
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    Monitoring the Use of HOV and HOT Lanes
    (Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2013-01) Holec, Eric; Somasundaram, Guruprasad; Papanikolopoulos, Nikolaos; Morellas, Vassilios
    This report presents the formulation and implementation of an automated computer vision and machine learning based system for estimation of the occupancy of passenger vehicles in high-occupancy vehicles and highoccupancy toll (HOV/HOT) lanes. We employ a multi-modal approach involving near-infrared images and highresolution color video images in conjunction with strong maximum margin based classifiers such as support vector machines. We attempt to maximize the information that can be extracted from these two types of images by computing different features. Then, we build classifiers for each type of feature which are compared to determine the best feature for each imaging method. Based on the performance of the classifiers we critique the efficacy of the individual approaches as the costs involved are significantly different.
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    Safety Impacts of the I-35W Improvements Done Under Minnesota’s Urban Partnership Agreement (UPA) Project
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2017-06) Davis, Gary A.; Gao, Jingru; Hourdos, John
    As part of an Urban Partnership Agreement project, the Minnesota Department of Transportation added lanes and began operating a priced dynamic shoulder lane (PDSL) on parts of Interstate 35W. Following the opening of these improvements, the frequency of rear-end crashes increased in certain sections, especially in the PDSL region. The object of this study was to determine if these increases were direct effects of the improvements or were due to changes in traffic conditions. Logistic regression analyses which controlled for changes in traffic conditions indicated no direct effect on the likelihood of rear-end crashes due to operation of the PDSL; the observed change in crash frequency was explained by the change in traffic conditions. This study also found evidence for a nonlinear relationship between a proxy for traffic density, lane occupancy, and the probability of a rear-end crash occurring during an hour. In several sections crashes were most likely when lane occupancies were approximately 20%–30%, and crash likelihood tended to decrease for lane occupancies below and above this range.
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    Sensing for HOV/HOT Lanes Enforcement
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2017-02) Morris, Ted; Morellas, Vassilios; Canelon-Suarez, Dario; Papanikolopoulos, Nikolaos
    The use and creation of combined high-occupancy vehicle/high-occupancy toll (HOV/HOT Lanes) have become more common in urban areas since all types of road users can take advantage of the lane either as a high- occupancy vehicle or opting in to pay a congestion adjusted free. However, to maintain working integrity of the lanes for all users, stepped enforcement to discourage cheating has been needed as more lanes are added. This study evaluated the capability of a novel image sensor device to automate detection of in-vehicle occupants to flag law enforcement of HOV/HOT lane violators. The sensor device synchronously captures three co-registered images, one in the visible spectrum and two others in the infrared bands. The key idea is that the infrared bands can enhance correct occupancy detection through known phenomenological spectral properties of objects and humans residing inside the vehicle. Several experiments were conducted to determine this capability across varied conditions and scenarios to assess detection segmentation algorithms of vehicle passengers and drivers. Although occupancy detection through vehicle glass could be achieved in many cases, improvements must be made to such a detection system to increase robustness and reliability as a law enforcement tool. These improvements were guided by the experimental results, as well as suggested methods for deployment if this or similar technologies were to be deployed in the future.
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    Study of Public Acceptance of Tolling with New Capacity and Credits: Concepts of FAST Miles and FEE Lanes
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation Research Services Section, 2010-07) Lari, Adeel; Aultman, Sara
    Conversion of high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes has become a relatively common managed lanes technique now employed in cities across the U.S. HOT lanes are created by developing a pricing system for existing HOV lanes that allow single occupancy vehicles to gain access to HOV lanes by paying a fee. Conversion of existing general purpose lanes to toll lanes or HOT lane operations, however, has not yet won public support as the perception persists that these “free” lanes have already been paid for and such conversions are a take-away. Focus groups were held in Minnesota to understand what policies, conditions, designs and operational characteristics could be considered that may satisfy concerns about general purpose lane adaptations to optional toll lanes or Flexible and Efficient Express (FEE) Lanes. FEE Lanes envision all users, except transit, paying a toll during peak-periods, with the lane reverting back to “free” operation outside of the peaks. Three configurations of FEE lanes were presented and a toll credit system was offered as a means to compensate users who may view the conversion as a take-away. Participants liked what they have already seen work, which is one priced lane on I-394 MnPASS, but were also concerned about user safety and equity. The credit system, which attempts to address user equity, was a source of confusion for many focus group participants. Although some participants seemed to like the idea of getting the credits to use FEE lanes, there were numerous concerns about logistics of credit management and distribution. These findings highlight the need for increased education and marketing about road pricing options which can assist in building support for a variety of pricing options, such as FEE lanes.
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    A Tool for Designing MnPASS Access Spacing
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2018-03) Zitzow, Stephen; Parikh, Gordon; Hourdos, John
    Dynamically priced High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes have been recently added to the traffic operations arsenal in an attempt to preserve infrastructure investment in the future by maintaining a control on demand. This study focuses on the operational and design features of HOT lanes. HOT lanes’ mobility and safety are contingent on the design of zones (“gates”) that drivers use to merge in or out of the facility. Existing methodologies for the design of access zones are limited to engineering judgment or studies that take into consideration undersized amount of observations. This project capitalized on the results of an earlier project that performed an assessment of safety and mobility on the HOT facilities in Minnesota highlighted the issues involved in either designs. The product of this project, the MnPASS Access Design application, provides a tool for traffic managers and planners to examine the conditions within an existing or prospective corridor and the distribution of shockwave lengths which are expected. From the distribution of shockwave lengths, decisions can be made regarding access restriction on the HOT lane to ensure that drivers do not attempt to make lane changes at locations prone to dangerous conditions. This tool provides support for the managers and planners by aggregating the entire behavior of the HOT lane within the corridor into a framework for simplified consideration.