摘要: |
The proposed study is a component of the principal investigator's (PI's) ongoing research effort to explore innovative pricing strategies for priced managed lanes (MLs). The objective of this project is to investigate travelers' reactions to a possible refund option of priced MLs. The investigation will focus on (1) gauging general interest and concerns regarding this concept, (2) eliciting travelers' choices of managed lane usage and refund claims under various situations, and (3) identifying and evaluating potential models to describe such choice behaviors. A stated preference (SP) survey will be developed and deployed in this project to collect relevant data. Simple descriptive analysis will first be performed to gain insights to the dataset. Choice behavior models in various fields and domains, including transportation, economics, insurance, and retail marketing, will be explored. Model fitting will be performed on selected models. The type of this project is basic research. It investigates a plausible future scenario where a refund option is provided to managed lane (ML) users. In the past four years, the number of priced ML facilities in the U.S. have rapidly increased from 6 to 17. However, refund option is not currently in practice. The goal of this research is to address the challenge of developing innovative pricing strategies to support ML goals that range from operational efficiency to social benefits and public acceptance. Expected direct outcomes of this project include (1) a well-designed survey, (2) a rich dataset, (3) a comprehensive survey of choice models across various fields and domains, and (4) a set of fitted models for priced MLs with refund option. |