Demand management measures in suburban areas with a toll highway alternative: impact on travel choices
- Autores: Fernando Romero García
- Directores de la Tesis: José Manuel Vassallo Magro (dir. tes.), Juan Gómez Sánchez (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid ( España ) en 2021
- Idioma: español
- Materias:
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- Resumen
Since the middle of the 20th century, the world's urban population has been growing at a dizzying rate and is expected to continue to do so over the next few decades. This trend has caused increasing mobility needs within limited space and time. The extensive use of private vehicles in urban areas has led to congestion problems in transportation networks and other externalities such as air pollution, noise, accidents, and land consumption. This problem is not uniformly distributed throughout the territory, being more evident in the outer zones of the metropolitan areas. In addition, travelers perceive different benefits and costs in the available transport alternatives, which may result in an inefficient distribution of traffic. A representative example of this fact is the notable difference in the share of traffic between some highways accessing Madrid and their corresponding parallel toll highways.
Researchers and transportation planners agree that the solution does not lie in expanding the capacity of the road network and propose to tackle the problem from the demand side. Transportation demand management (TDM) measures aim to change traveler behavior toward more sustainable transportation options.
In the literature, the way different TDM strategies are perceived by travelers and the impact they have on route and mode choices have been extensively addressed, both in cities and in metropolitan areas as a whole. However, little attention has been paid to suburban trips, which are precisely those with the lowest share of sustainable transport mode use. Additionally, there is a broad consensus on the fact that the most effective strategy to improve the sustainability of the transport system is the joint implementation of TDM measures of different nature.
In this context, this thesis aims to gain a deeper insight into how different TDM strategies affect mobility in suburban environments with toll and free highway alternatives competing with each other. To that end, we explore in parallel how three types of measures —push policies, pull policies, and real-time information— influence travelers' choices on transport corridors in Spain and whether these measures are successful in improving the overall efficiency of the system.
In particular, based on empirical data and the stated preferences reported by travelers in a questionnaire, a series of discrete choice models are estimated to determine the impact of various TDM initiatives on mode choice, route choice, and general acceptance. Different outcomes are obtained for each strategy. Among the conclusions, it is worth noting that public transport is an effective tool to mitigate congestion. Moreover, drivers exhibit a low willingness to use toll roads in urban areas when there are relatively similar free alternatives. The TDM solutions proposed in this thesis are not satisfactory in terms of achieving an optimal traffic distribution between highways with different costs.
This thesis provides relevant insights into TDM strategies and based on these findings it proposes a set of recommendations for transportation planners and managers.
