Benefit-Cost Analysis of Variable Pricing Projects: QuickRide HOT Lanes
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Volume 132, Issue 3
Abstract
Researchers identified a potential methodology for obtaining the incremental societal costs and benefits from a variable pricing project and applied that methodology to the QuickRide high occupancy/toll (HOT) lanes in Texas. This is one of the longest running variable pricing projects in the United States and, as such, it provided useful historical data and trends upon which to estimate future benefits and costs. This analysis found that the incremental societal benefits of QuickRide exceeded incremental societal costs for the time period considered. A companion paper that used the same methodology to examine the benefits and costs of the SR-91 Express Lanes found similar results. However, the differences between the benefits and costs were dramatically different for the two projects, indicative of the relative size of the two projects and the number of travelers impacted. On SR-91, tens of thousands of travelers were impacted on a daily basis where QuickRide’s impact was limited to approximately 400 travelers per day. Interestingly, the benefit-cost ratios of the two projects were similar, both between 1.5 and 1.7.
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Acknowledgments
The writers would like to thank the FHwA’s Value Pricing Program for support of the projects analyzed in this research. Additionally, Houston METRO and TxDOT partnered with the FHwA in supporting these projects and the efforts made by all of those agencies are gratefully acknowledged. Additional thanks to Doug Lee and two anonymous reviewers for examining an earlier version of this paper. Any errors and omissions are entirely the fault of the writers.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 132 • Issue 3 • March 2006
Pages: 183 - 190
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Nov 12, 2004
Accepted: May 4, 2005
Published online: Mar 1, 2006
Published in print: Mar 2006
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