Innovative Traffic Demand Management Strategy

Various traffic demand management strategies have been implemented to alleviate traffic congestion, but they have often failed to effectively mitigate congestion in roads, especially when surging demand is concentrated in a short period of time. The proposed expressway reservation system is an innovative and bold strategy in traffic demand management: drivers would make reservations for traveling on expressways. This paper explores the viability of introducing the expressway reservation system during two major national holidays in South Korea. To that end, a survey on the expressway reservation system was conducted. More than 80% of the 1,000 survey respondents said that their perceived travel time during the national holidays was two to three times longer than usual. The percentage of respondents willing to change their departure time to reduce travel time during the national holidays also exceeded 80%. This tendency grew stronger as perceived travel time became longer. Of those who would change their departure time, almost 84% said that changing their departure time up to ±4 h from their initially intended time would be acceptable. Despite such a willingness and flexibility in changing the departure time, only 51.4% of the respondents thought that the expressway reservation system was necessary. Nonetheless, 73.4% of the respondents said that they would participate in the expressway reservation system if it were implemented. Statistical analysis showed that perceived travel time, age, and travel distance were the most influential factors for the public's acceptance of the expressway reservation system.