As transportation providers across the nation face growing funding shortfalls they are increasingly looking to tolling as an option to increase their revenue. As toll revenue becomes a more important part of the funding for transportation programs agencies are seeking to determine the potential impacts of more complex arrays of tolling options such as electronic toll collection and frequency of use discounts. The transportation planning organizations responsible for providing information to agencies are being expected to produce more reliable forecasts of traffic and revenue that directly reflect the subtleties of these tolling scenarios. In order to better provide this information DelDOT developed an improved toll demand model. This toll demand model was incorporated into their existing nested logit mode choice model. One thing that makes their new toll demand model unique is that it not only incorporates the toll/no toll choice, but also the cash/electronic toll payment (E-ZPass) choice for single occupant vehicles and high occupancy vehicles. Another unique aspect of their model is that it includes an E-ZPass ownership model which allows them to reduce theamount of unquantifiable attributes included in the mode choice bias constants. The model would be readily transferable to other areas that either do not currently have tolling or do not explicitly account for tolling in their existing models.
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