1 “ Feasibility of a Metropolitan Truck - only Toll Lane Network :

The movement of commercial vehicles through already congested metropolitan freeway networks is an important policy challenge today for transportation officials, and will become even more important in the future. This paper reports on a study of truck-only toll (TOT) lanes that was conducted in the Atlanta metropolitan region. This study focused on a regional network of TOT lanes with varying levels of pricing strategies and vehicle eligibility criteria applied in the analysis. The paper describes the overall planning approach for the study, the analysis that was conducted to determine which corridors were feasible for TOT application, and the different strategies that were investigated. In addition, this paper examines the relative effectiveness of managed lane strategies—high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, and TOT lanes. The paper concludes that the TOT lane strategy is the most effective from a road management perspective. Importantly, the paper examines the institutional dynamics of both the public and private sector participants in this process, and their different responses to the study results. The TOT study produced estimates of the productivity benefits to the trucking industry as well as congestion reduction benefits to other users of the freeway network. The benefits were significant in the context of what other transportation strategies would likely produce.