Evaluation of Traffic and Revenue Risks of Toll Roads and Managed Lane Facilities

Traffic and revenue (T&R) forecasts are based on travel demand models and inputs with associated uncertainties and imperfections. Forecasters must guard against overstating a proposed project’s T&R potential while avoiding being too conservative. Performing sophisticated risk assessment and sensitivity tests on key input parameters is a prudent solution to this forecasting dichotomy, thus reducing the risk in planning, designing, and financing the toll facilities. This paper presents a risk analysis process and shows two case studies, one for a traditional toll road (where all of the facility’s mainlanes are tolled) and one for a managed lane facility (where some of the mainlanes are tolled and some of the mainlanes, called general purpose lanes, are non-tolled), where the process is applied. In addition, impacts of select extreme events are estimated and presented.