Evaluation of Operational Effects of Joint Managed Lane Policies

Abstract

This paper presents a method to evaluate the operational effects of managed lane policies—vehicle eligibility, access control, pricing, and the number of managed lanes—that form a policy combination set. Two macroscopic methods are developed to prescreen the set via simple criteria, followed by integer linear programming with multiple objectives and constraints to identify the noninferior policies among the downsized set. The approach is demonstrated on the Southern California SR-57 corridor. The application eliminates twelve of possible twenty policy combinations by the macroscopic methods, and generates four noninferior policies—the existing high-occupancy vehicle lane operation and three additional potential high-occupancy toll lane policies—in terms of maximum vehicle and passenger throughput, minimum vehicle hour traveled, and travel time variance. The prescreening efficiency of the macroscopic stage, ranging from 0 to 95%, is affected by the initial policies and traffic conditions. It is concluded that the approach can substantially assess a larger policy set and effectively identify the operational effects of joint manage lane policies.