Assessment of Changes in Toll Fares in Conditions of Increased Traffic Load

The purpose of the study is to assess changes of toll fares usedon toll collection points. When toll road is operating in an urban environment, the operator is inevitably faced with the need to adaptintelligent transport system to the conditions of an ever-increasingvolume and changing composition of the traffic. Such changes havea direct impact on the capacity of the toll road, in particular at tollcollection points. The conducted research is aimed at analyzing the method of reducing the traffic load at the toll collection points duringpeak hours by making changes to the toll fares aimed at uniform distribution of traffic flow throughout the day. As an example, a tollcollectionpointon the main roaddirection of the Western High-SpeedDiameter toll road was chosen.Material sandmethods.A discrete-event simulation model developedin the AnyLogic software was used to assess the quality of operationandthroughputofthetollcollectionpoint.Thesoftwarehasa sufficientlevel of detail to reproduce the operation of the toll collection system,and allows managing all the necessary parameters of the system andtraffic flow. Analysis of the data obtained from the simulated model experiments was carried out using the statistical package R.Results. As part of the study, the operational characteristics ofthe toll collection point, in particular its threshold capacity, were  determined, and, if it was exceeded, the length of the emerging queue was determined. Taking into account the operator’s risks arising fromthe formation of a traffic congestion, an approach was proposed tochange the toll fare policy of the toll road by using a more flexiblefares based on dividing the day time fare into several time intervalsand using increasing coefficients for toll fare when paying for travelduring peak hours. Using the example of toll booth of the WesternHigh-SpeedDiameter,theincreasingcoefficientsofthecostoftravelata rush hour were considered, and the risks of reducing the operator’s income from toll collection were assessed.Conclusion. Based on the results obtained, an assessment of the effectiveness of the application of measures to change the existing tollfare policy, aimed at optimizing the traffic flow of a toll road, canbe carried out. In addition, such an analysis can be used to assess the investment attractiveness of a project, develop a toll fare policy, increase income and other similar tasks. Further research can be aimed at increasing the economic indicators of toll road projects, and developing additional mathematical tools used in the formation of toll fare policy.