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Optimization of toll road lane operation: Serbian case study

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Abstract

One of the basic issues of the inefficient toll plaza operation is reflected in the stationary configuration of toll lane operation. Due to the traffic demand variations during the time, there is a need for the dynamic management of toll lane operation. In practice, managing the toll lane operation is conducted occasionally based on the experience of tolling operators and most often when congestion has already occurred at toll plazas. Having this in mind, the aim of this paper was to develop a model for optimizing toll road lanes’ operation. The proposed model involves the minimization of costs related to the user travel time, fuel consumption and pollutant emission, as well as the costs of the employees responsible for toll collecting. The application of Dynamic Programming was proposed for solving the mentioned problem. The developed model was then applied in the case study of a toll plaza in Belgrade (Serbia), where the application of Dynamic Programming determined the appropriate number of operating toll lanes of different tolling systems during certain time periods. The paper also included the analysis of traffic flows for a 10-year period in order to define the tolling policy. The conducted analysis showed that for the 10-year period 15% of the users of the manual system should shift to the electronic toll collection system in order to retain the level of service equal to the current one with the existing toll plaza capacity. A higher level of service would require an additional increase in the share of the users of advanced toll collection systems.

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Availability of data and material

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgment

This work has been partially supported by the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development through grant No. TR36002.

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No funds, grants, or other support was received.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering, University of Belgrade, Vojvode Stepe 305, Belgrade, 11000, Serbia

    Marina Milenković, Miloš Nikolić & Draženko Glavić

Authors
  1. Marina Milenković
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  2. Miloš Nikolić
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  3. Draženko Glavić
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Contributions

Conceptualization: MM, DG; Methodology: MM, MN; Formal analysis and investigation: MM, MN, DG; Writing - original draft preparation: MM, MN, DG; Writing - review and editing: MM, MN, DG; Resources: MM, DG; Supervision: MM, DG, MN.

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Correspondence to Marina Milenković.

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Milenković, M., Nikolić, M. & Glavić, D. Optimization of toll road lane operation: Serbian case study. Oper Res Int J 22, 5297–5322 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-022-00730-0

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