Simulation of loading-based toll plaza using STELLA

A microscopic System Dynamics (SD) software STELLA was used for highly concurred and manually operated toll plaza simulation. The SD model consists of vehicle, waiting line, tollbooth, and measurements of effectiveness (MOE) sub-models. Queuing length was selected as the key factor of tollbooth choosing instead of number of vehicles and feedback of queuing length on service time was considered. Real-life data collected at No. 2 Yangtse River Bridge toll plaza in Nanjing was used to validate the developed model. The validated model was used to evaluate the impacts of introducing electronic toll collection (ETC). The results showed that the WIM technology does decrease the efficiency of toll plaza operation; for an alteration scheme of adding ETC toll-lane, if the traffic volume is lower than 2500vph or the percentage of ETC customer is less than 15%, it is not effective.