Evaluation of Toll Plaza Performance After Addition of Express Toll Lanes at Mainline Toll Plaza

Conversion of a conventional toll plaza to an open-road tolling design with express electronic toll collection (ETC) lanes improved operating conditions for cash and ETC customers during the peak a.m. and p.m. periods. Data were analyzed before and after the plaza's renovation to evaluate its performance. Vehicle delay was not excessive at the plaza during the before-study analysis except for heavy demand during the p.m. peak southbound partly because of a reduction in available service lanes. The typical average delay per cash-paying vehicle was 14 s. After the redesign, the analysis showed a reduction in the average delay per vehicle of 7 s for the automatic coin machine (ACM) lanes and 8 s for the manual cash payment lanes. The average delay per lane per hour was reduced by over 4,560 s for the ACM lanes and 3,360 s for the manual payment lanes. Reduction in total plaza delay for cash customers averaged more than 20 s/veh in the after study. ETC use in the cash payment lanes previously averaged over 10% and dropped below 3% during the a.m. peak. For the exception of the ACM lanes during the p.m. peak northbound, the overall ETC use in the cash lanes was now less than 5%, showing the benefit recognized by ETC users at the plaza from express lanes. During the before study, the plaza capacity in the peak direction during a peak hour was estimated at a maximum of 5,624 vehicles per hour. After implementation of open-road tolling, the estimated capacity increased by 43.8%.