Evaluating Alternative Operations Strategies to Improve Travel Time ...

SHRP 2 L11: Final Report
Congestion and infrastructure capacity limitations will lead to occasional freight system
disruptions.
Finance
• A broader application of vehicle use charges will occur based on location and time of day.
This will become the dominant source of funding for federal highway projects, and some
states and regions will rely on this funding source as well. Charges will be common for
separable facilities and for privatized and franchised facilities. These mileage charges will
be used, sometimes only lightly, to manage travel demand and thereby reduce congestion.
The barrier of interoperability of electronic charging mechanisms will be solved through
standardization, but the barriers will remain and it will not be easy to shift to mileage-based
fees during this interval.
• Public-private partnerships will continue to penetrate the transportation market because of
the potential for increasing efficiency and generating profits. All stakeholders in PPPs
(franchise holders, lenders, public agencies, users, and the general public) will have a
vested interest in objective measurement of facility performance and condition. Travel-time
reliability will almost certainly be one of these measures. This will increase the demand for
good reliability measures and the data to support them.
Effects on the Sources of Congestion
The expected travel behavior and the impact of the scenario drivers that are described for the
Mediocre Scenario could have the impacts on transportation-system reliability are shown in Table
5.2.
ALTERNATIVE FUTURES Page 56