Essays on Travel Demand for Toll Roads

Abstract

Road pricing, a fee related to using a road, is one of the main instruments used in transport regulation to manage both externalities such as congestion and revenue for infrastructure investment. As road pricing attracts ongoing interest from policymakers, there is a gap in the literature examining road pricing and its impacts on traveler behavior and demand for priced limited access roads (or toll roads). This dissertation examines policy-related empirical questions regarding the relationship between road pricing and travel demand in a three-essay format and aims to provide empirical evidence regarding two main areas of ongoing road pricing experiments in the United States: the road pricing of interstate highways and the conversion of existing high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes.