Optimal Deployment of Managed Lanes in General Networks

Falling budget, political, and environmental constraints force decision makers and transportation authorities to develop innovative ways to better manage existing facilities. Managed lanes, more specifically, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) and high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, have been recognized as viable options to improve vehicle trips without constructing additional capacity. This paper investigates how to deploy managed lanes in general networks. A mathematical program with complementarity constraints is formulated to simultaneously determine the locations of managed lanes and the toll rates on HOT lanes to maximize the social benefit. Numerical examples based on the networks in the literature are presented to verify the model.