Impacts of Time-of-Day Pricing Initiative on Car and Truck Movements at Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Facilities.

In this paper the impacts of the time of day pricing initiated in March 25, 2001, on traffic at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) facilities are analyzed. The analyses are based on the traffic data routinely collected at all toll lanes by PANYNJ. Since terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center disrupted the transportation network, and made it impossible to isolate and analyze the reaction to the PANYNJ toll prices, the time period before the September 11, 2001 event was considered for the impact analysis. The research has confirmed statistically significant shifts towards pre-peaks both in the mornings (5-6 AM) and afternoons (3-4 PM) in car traffic percent share after the time of day pricing. Also, weekday truck traffic percent share showed a statistically significant shift to morning pre-peak (5-6 AM) and afternoon post-peak hours (7-8 PM). However, weekend car and truck traffic percent share did not have a statistically significant change in peak-shoulder hours (11 AM-12 PM and 8-9 PM). In addition, weekday and weekend peak-period car percent share experienced a statistically significant decrease only at the George Washington Bridge (lower and upper levels). Unlike car traffic, truck traffic decreased for all peak-periods on both weekdays and weekends at all crossings after the time of day pricing, though the decrease in peak traffic was statistically significant only on weekdays. These findings indicated that PANYNJ time of day pricing initiative was successful to spread weekday peak-period traffic to the hours just before or after the peak toll rates are in effect, for both cars and trucks.