Evaluation of pre-registration and incentive scheme applied for mitigation of motorway traffic congestion

This study describes the result of six transportation demand management (TDM) implementations in three major traffic concentration periods of 2009-2010 with an expressway pre-registration and incentive scheme for electronic toll collection (ETC) vehicles in order to mitigate traffic congestion of the Tomei Expressway in Japan. The new TDM scheme offers an incentive to a limited number of pre-registered target travelers selected by drawings, from the viewpoint of reducing revenue loss, after confirming the eligibility of their travel as specified by the new TDM scheme with the ETC data. This scheme is considered more useful than the early applied TDM scheme with toll discount. The operator can control the total cost in the new TDM scheme, avoiding the large revenue loss incurred by the operator because of the toll discount in the early TDM scheme. The new scheme also has the advantage of easily conducting web surveys of the registrants´ behavioural changes with regard to the TDM scheme. The characteristics of travelers´ behavioural changes and the implementation effects of the TDM scheme are described.