University of California Transportation Center

As the evidence mounts that HOV lanes will not produce expected reductions in congestion and emission, alternatives are being sought. High occupancy toll (HOT) lanes and truck only lanes are attractive alternatives. In this study, a region-wide system of new HOV lanes, HOT lanes, and truck only lanes m the Sacramento region are compared. The travel effects are simulated with the Sacramento regional travel demand model (SACMET96). The economic benefits for both personal travel and commercial vehicle travel are obtained from economic welfare models developed for use with the travel model. The DTIM2 model is used for the emissions results. The scenarios are evaluated against travel, emissions, total economic benefit, and equity criteria. With respect to travel and emissions, the results did not vary much among scenarios but the economic benefit results did have more significant variation. The scenarios that included HOT lanes produced economic benefits that were clearly superior to the other scenarios. As a result, it is concluded that the economic welfare models applied in this study can be useful tools in the analysis of transportation policies.