Variations in Toll Road Impacts: Case Studies from Texas

Facing funding shortfalls for infrastructure construction and maintenance, many urban regions are seeking to develop new toll roads. These can diversely impact a region’s traffic, land use, economy and citizens’ welfare. Regions have distinct network configurations, spatial and temporal variation in demand patterns, as well as road user characteristics affecting their response to such roads. This paper illuminates the nature of variations in impacts by consistently modeling and comparing the effects of adding toll roads to three distinct Texas regions with geographical proximity: Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and El Paso. Initial models were calibrated for the Austin region and then appropriately adapted to the DFW and El Paso regions. While impacts varied by region, all cases suggested impacts were greatest near the toll roads, with welfare improvements falling with distance in DFW and El Paso and toll road end points gaining the most in Austin