Research On The Toll Rate Adjustment Model Of Toll Roads

Toll roads appeared as the way to relieve investment burden of government to build roads. The amount of toll road increases in short times with the development of economic and transportation. However, high toll rates are becoming the big social problem to deter economic development and cause plenty of users'complaints. The paper aims to establish toll rate adjustment model to balance the benefits of both investor and road user.The paper analyses the influential factors from two perspectives. One is from investor's perspective, the analysis focuses on the economic elements of road projects and choose the ROI as the key factor to represent the investor's benefit. The other is from the user's perspective, willingness to pay, which is mostly the psychological elements affected by toll rate, is chosen as the representative factor, which is further influence the quantity of traffic volume.System dynamic (SD) is employed as the methodology to establish the toll road adjustment model. The proposed toll road adjustment model simulates the operative behavior of toll roads by considering the benefits of and conflicts between investor and user and can predict the future financial development based on the simulation. To show the real simulation process, this paper takes Guanjing expressway to do the case study based on the annual report of Ninghu Expressway Corporation which manage Guangjing expressway. After simulation, the simulated data is compared to the real operative data to test the reliability of the model. The high consistency between the two set of data shows the high reliability of the model. The model is then used to simulate the future operation of Guangjing expressway. Based on the simulated data, the key financial factors are computed and adjustment suggestions are given.The innovation of the paper is to introduce SD to the toll rate adjustment model. The advantages of the model are it can balance investor's benefit and user's benefit by studying the toll road in a systematic way. The research outcome can be used in toll road management practice as the basis to adjust toll rate and also can reduce user's complaints.