The proposed work builds upon
four important
projects: "Evaluation Study of the Port Authority of New York
and New Jersey's Time of Day Pricing Initiative"
(Holguin-Veras
et al., 2005a); the "Evaluation
Study of the New Jersey Turnpike Pricing Initiative" (Ozbay
et al., 2005) the NYSDOT's "Potential for Off-Peak
Deliveries to Congested Urban Areas" project
(Holguin-Veras
et al., 2005b; Holguin-Veras,
2006); and the "Advanced Travelers Information
System." Although they are discussed in "Related
Proposals," it is important to summarize key findings because
they provide the scientific support for the proposal.
The PANYNJ
project conducted
the evaluation of
the impacts of the 2001 toll increases at the PANYNJ facilities on the
behavior of both passengers and freight. The data gathered about the
behavioral impacts on freight are
the only data available in the world about this important subject.
The research highlighted that freight pricing, in isolation of other
policies, is of limited effectiveness in moving truck traffic to the
off-hours. This is because the price signal reaching
receivers is of no significance when compared to the marginal costs of
moving to the off-hours. Since
receivers are the carriers'
customers, it is impossible for the carriers to switch to the off-hours
without receivers willing to accept deliveries beyond their
regular hours.
The
project team members also
conducted the "Advanced
Travelers
Information System." As part of the project, a fleet of 200 vehicles became
GPS-equipped probes and shared wireless data about network travel
times. This project was the first ever in the world for real time data
to be collected by vehicles and then distributed back to those same
vehicles, so that better paths could be selected. Because of its
importance, an entire session of the 2005 TRB Annual Meeting focused on
this project.