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Level-of-service (LOS) is a key index that reflects the operational condition of the toll-plaza. Although it has been observed that the developed countries have a very effective system at the toll plazas; but, the developing countries are still struggling to achieve the properly managed system that could improve the customer satisfaction at toll plazas. Hence, a sample of 1431 respondents has been collected at four toll plazas located in India and analyzed, for users' perceived LOS. The ordered probit model was developed and the results show that humps at tollbooth is a highly influencing variable. The study results reveal that the users not only consider delay but also a multitude of factors such as age, education, experience, frequency, aesthetics etc. while evaluating the users' perceived LOS at toll plazas. The results obtained from the present study portrays that all significant factors need to be considered when planning of toll plazas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most projects across the world are built under the public--private partnership (PPP) module. In the highway sector, the highway projects are built by the concessioner, and in lieu of that, he generates revenue by collecting tolls from road users. The toll plazas built across the highways to collect tolls act as a bottleneck in highway facilities. Although the toll collection system has been improved worldwide, users are still experiencing an enormous delay at toll plazas due to congestion, especially in developing countries like India. This congestion is caused due to various factors such as long service time, an inadequate number of windows, traffic volume, categories of toll rates, etc., which lead to delay, degradation of capacity, and level of service. Different researchers in their countries have analysed all these factors. The present article gives a detailed literature review summarizing various studies on the different parameters related to toll plazas and proposes research gaps from the perspective of developing countries. The challenges and methodology for evaluating various parameters are also discussed, and a way forward for future research is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehending the variation in service time is essential for evaluating the capacity and level of service of the toll-plaza and developing policies for effective management of tollbooth operations. The present study analyzes the variation in service time using statistical distribution at manually operated toll plazas in India. For this purpose, traffic video data were collected for five toll-plazas in India. The vehicles approaching the toll plaza are divided broadly into seven different categories. The service time of different vehicle classes was extracted manually from the recorded video. The variation in service time for a total of 13 leader-follower pairs (small car as leader and follower) were modeled using statistical distributions. Based on the Chi-squared, Anderson Darling (AD), and Kolmogorov-Smirnoff (KS) test statistics, log-normal distribution was found as the best-fitted distribution among other potential statistical distributions. Investigations revealed that traffic composition, vehicular characteristics, variation in toll rates, drivers' and tollbooth operators' behavior significantly influence the variability in service time. The important outcome of this study is the development of service time based level of service (LOS) criteria, which were developed using k-mean clustering technique. The developed LOS thresholds can be very useful to field engineers and practitioners for evaluating the existing performance of tollbooth and accordingly facilitating the development of appropriate policies for effective management of toll plaza operations. • Service time distribution is found to be lognormal distribution for manual tollbooth under mixed traffic conditions. • Location parameter varies according to location, leader-follower wise, vehicle category wise and with respect to time. • Level of service (LOS) thresholds are developed on the basis of normalized service time. • For toll plaza, LOS C the normalized service time is in between 8 and 12 s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The service headway at toll-plaza is an important microscopic parameter for capacity estimation, level-of-service (LOS) analysis, simulation studies, safety and delay studies, etc. Service headway is composed of processing time (includes reading the FASTag information of the vehicle by sensors) and the clearance time of the vehicle. The present study aims to analyze the variations in service headway in terms of best-fitted distribution for different vehicle classes, leader–follower pair in the same toll-lane, and locations for FASTag lanes operating under mixed traffic conditions. It is observed that the service headway is lower for Small Car (SC) (6.88 s) and maximum for Trailer (15.42 s), with an average service headway of 10.53 s for all leader–follower pairs. The results show that the best-fitted distribution for different vehicle classes at different locations is Generalized Extreme Value (GEV), followed by Generalized Inverse Gaussian (GIG) and then Inverse Gaussian distribution. The present study results will be used for the development of the microsimulation model, capacity analysis, and safety analysis at toll plazas operating under mixed traffic conditions. • It is observed that the service headway is lower for Small Car (SC) and maximum for Trailer. • Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) was found to be the best-fitted distribution for different vehicle classes. • Generalized Inverse Gaussian (GIG) was found to be second-most in the rank of best-fitted distribution. • The shape factor of GEV distribution is positive for the service headway of vehicles passing through the lane without a boom-barrier. • Standard deviation–mean and excess kurtosis–skewness plots are developed for each distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]