An Experiment in Mega-Regional Road Pricing Using Advanced Commuter

5 Worsening highway congestion is a challenge to mega-regional competitiveness; and 6 changing regional geographies and development location decisions, among other factors, demand 7 that public policy responses go beyond traditional demand management approaches. Congestion 8 pricing has been suggested as a remedy. In this article, we analyze the outcomes of multiple 12 NJ, PA and WV. Using a mega-regional travel demand model, we incorporate different values-13 of-time for travelers under different conditions. However, our value-of-time estimates are not 14 limited to income categories. Our estimates also include trip purposes across a number of 15 scenarios. We demonstrate that adding trip-purpose to congestion price determination leads to 16 different outcomes at the mega-regional level and also for individual sub-regions. The results of 17 *Manuscript Click here to download Manuscript: ASCE_JUPD_MWC_FINAL_V3.pdf 2 this paper show how highway users respond in substantially different, and in some cases, 1 unexpected ways to congestion charging when trips by income and purpose are assigned unique 2 values-of-time. The findings provide engineers, planners and policy makers with a new 3 analytical approach to measuring traveler elasticity to tolls while demonstrating the complexity 4 involved with road pricing mechanisms. We conclude with implications for adopting this 5 approach and ideas for implementing them in a complex institutional setup .