Tolling, Pricing and Road User Charging

Why Tolling and Pricing? 

Tolling and pricing strategies, when executed as part of a system to better match capacity with demand, can help optimize existing systems and remedy critical infrastructure gaps. While many agencies often consider the impacts of tolling and pricing policies on aggregate traffic (e.g. vehicle miles traveled and congestion), what’s even more crucial to consider is how people and communities might be impacted. Our approach is people-centric and data-driven, as we focus on the impacts to equity populations, supported by robust modeling and risk analyses. 

People-Centric, Data-Driven 

Cambridge Systematics has five decades of experience in the transportation industry and is uniquely positioned to partner with agencies who are considering options for improving system management, including tolling and pricing. Our consultants are experts in multimodal transportation policy planning, market research, and travel demand modeling and simulation. We leverage innovative data solutions, and our clients look to us for advice on topics such as connected and autonomous vehicle trends, curb management, and disruptive technologies. Our approach to pricing hinges on our ability to develop solutions across modes, understanding the need for sustainable alternatives to pricing.

Our Expertise 

• Policy planning – we understand the key decision factors and implications of pricing/tolling/road user charging on people and communities. 

• Big Data – we leverage location-based services data (see LOCUS) to analyze origin-destination flows, traditional and non-traditional travel patterns, travel by equity populations, and value of time and reliability. 

• Traffic & Revenue forecasting – we are industry leaders in model development and application and bring objectivity to revenue forecasting.  

• Market research and choice modeling – we do traffic and revenue forecasting, mode and route choice modeling, and revenue forecasting based on sensitivity to changes in travel parameters. 

• Meso- and microscopic traffic simulation – we determine detailed traffic impacts at an operational level, including managed lanes and dynamic pricing. 

• Risk analytics – we develop a range of forecasts considering a range of societal and transport drivers, developing multiple risk factors for all pricing analyses.