Safety assessment of the conversion of toll plazas to all-electronic toll collection system

Traditional mainline toll plaza (TMTP) is considered the most high-risk location on the toll roads. Conversion from TMTP or hybrid mainline toll plaza (HMTP) to an all-electronic toll collection (AETC) system has demonstrated measured improvement in traffic operations and environmental issues. However, there is a lack of research that quantifies the safety impacts of these new tolling systems. This study evaluated the safety effectiveness of the conversion from TMTP or HMTP to AETC system. An extensive data collection was conducted that included hundred mainline toll plazas located on more than 750 miles of toll roads in Florida. Various observational before-after studies including the empirical Bayes method were applied. The results indicated that the conversion from the TMTP to an AETC system resulted in an average crash reduction of 76, 75, and 68% for total, fatal-and-injury and property damage only (PDO) crashes, respectively; for rear end and lane change related (LCR) crashes the average reductions were 80 and 74%, respectively. The conversion from HMTP to AETC system enhanced traffic safety by reducing crashes by 24,28 and 20% of total, fatal-and-injury, and PDO crashes respectively; also, for rear end and LCR crashes, the average reductions were 15 and 22%, respectively. Overall, this paper provided an up-to-date safety impact of using different toll collection systems. The results proved that the AETC system significantly improved traffic safety for all crash categories; and changed toll plazas from the highest risk on Expressways to be similar to regular segments. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.