Determining the Reasonable Scale of a Toll Highway Network in China
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 140, Issue 10
Abstract
This research aims to determine the reasonable scale of toll highways in China by considering factors including effects of non-debt investments; agency costs of construction, maintenance, and system operations; user travel time costs; debt repayment; and toll revenue generation. A bilevel optimization model is proposed, in which the lower-level optimization uses origin-destination (O-D) travel demand for network traffic assignments and the upper-level optimization uses data on link-based traffic volumes generated from the lower-level model and other influencing factors as inputs to determine a reasonable scale of toll highway network. The model is applied to determine the reasonable scales of expressways in provinces of Hebei, Jiangsu, Jilin, and Shaanxi located in the central, eastern, northeastern, and western economic regions that form a predominant portion of toll highways in China. It is revealed that the current expressway network scales in all four provinces are higher than the reasonable scales by 22–38%. The provinces are faced with extremely high asset–debt risks that are likely to get worse in the future if the toll highways continue to be constructed using the same financing and investment scheme. It is recommended to seek alternative financial resources such as private capitals for expressway construction and management to reduce the risks of highway financial affordability.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the financial support of this study by the Reason Foundation, Los Angles, California, and would like to thank the Toll Highway Authorities of Hebei, Jiangsu, Jilin, and Shaanxi provinces for facilitating the collection of data on agency costs, travel demand, and field traffic counts.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 140 • Issue 10 • October 2014
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 2, 2013
Accepted: Feb 5, 2014
Published online: May 29, 2014
Published in print: Oct 1, 2014
Discussion open until: Oct 29, 2014
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