Design and Evaluation of Toll Plaza Systems

With the increasing population density and industrial base in New Jersey, highways such as GST or NJ Turnpike experience severe traffic jams at toll plazas during the rush hours. Good designs of these systems can impact significantly to the effective use of the infrastructure, and contribute to increasing standard of living of its residents. We analyze several designs of toll plazas and use it to search for the optimal layout when the number of each type of toll collection booths is fixed. We also consider the optimal number of each type of toll booths for given traffic intensities of each type of traffic. Our ultimate goal is to provide a decision tool to dynamically control tollbooth designs during the different time of the day and the week to best serve vehicle drivers. We also discuss future research topics, including some theoretical studies in the delay analysis of the toll plaza queueing problem, and simulation software development with animation capabilities that demonstrate different strategies and their effect on the traffic congestion.