Congestion has become a chronic problem which is the cause of a great number of inefficiencies in the transportation system, such as reducing average speeds, increasing trip times, higher fuel consumption and severe environmental damage. All these negative effects are putting at risk the main goal of the current common European Transport Policy: sustainable mobility. Traditionally this problem has been tried to be overcame by increasing the capacity of current infrastructures. But it has been demonstrated that new infrastructures induce new traffic, and thus reproducing the problem in the mid term. According to this, the new transport policy guidelines are trying to solve the limitation of infrastructures in terms of capacity by maximizing the efficiency in their use, instead of building new infrastructures. One of the most effective strategies is the increase in the average vehicle occupancy rates by providing incentives to the use of the so-called highoccupancy modes. This paper presents a demand model for HOV lanes according to the European context, where the public transport system comprises a real alternative that is able to make car users shift to public transport. In particular, this paper focus on the research based on the N-VI corridor Bus/High-Occupancy-Vehicle lane in Madrid (Spain), where a modal choice behaviour study has been made and a discrete choice model has been developed. (Author/publisher)
Abstract