MARKETING THE MANAGED LANES CONCEPT

The lane concept is currently being considered on major freeway projects in Texas cities. While the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) concept is familiar in most urban areas, motorists are less familiar with lanes. The term managed encompasses a variety of facility types, including HOV lanes, high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, single occupancy vehicle (SOV) express lanes, special use lanes, and truck lanes. The premise of the lanes concept is to increase freeway efficiency and provide free flow operations for certain freeway users by packaging various operational and design strategies. Most of these actions offer the flexibility to be adjusted to match changing corridor and regional goals. The projects reviewed in this report focus attention on the newer concept of pricing separate travel lanes, including HOT lanes and toll lanes, since previous research has addressed marketing and gaining public support for HOV lanes, SOV lanes, and truck lanes. The goal in reviewing these kinds of projects is to gain an understanding of public perception and public interaction when a new and complex concept for managing travel demand is introduced.