School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Ph.D. Thesis Defense Announcement

EVALUATING INDUCED CHANGES IN ROUTING BEHAVIOR AFTER THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NORTHWEST CORRIDOR MANAGED LANE

By Ronald O. Boodhoo

Advisors:

Dr. Michael Rodgers and Dr. Randall Guensler

Committee Members:  Dr. Michael Hunter (CEE), Dr. Angshuman Guin (CEE), Dr. Franklin Gbologah (Chick-Fil-A Corporation), Dr. Abhilasha Saroj (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

Date and Time: April 28, 2025.  1:00PM-4:00PM

Location: SEB 122

Virtual Link: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/92784563728

ABSTRACT
The Northwest Corridor Express Lanes (NWC), completed in September 2018, added a total of 29.7 miles of barrier separated express lanes along I-75 from Akers Mill Road to Hickory Grove Road and along I-575 from I-75 to Sixes Road. Existing studies evaluating the effectiveness of managed lane implementations primarily focus on evaluating travel time savings between adjacent General Purpose Lanes and Express Lanes under a perceived value of time. However, other than the end points the NWC uses dedicated exits and entries and with a single exception at Chastain Road, which restricts access to and from the General-Purpose lanes. Thus, evaluation of any travel time saving associated with using the managed lanes must include evaluation of any differences in arterial travel time associated with the different routes between origin and destination when using the General-Purpose and managed lanes. This dissertation evaluates the impact of the NWC on total travel time and routing behavior by developing a large-scale traffic microsimulation (developed in VISSIM®) coupled with the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Activity-Based Travel Demand Model (ABM). used to model trip entry and exit points for use within the traffic simulation for trips using the NWC/I-75 corridor model. A sensitivity analysis was conducted on toll rates charged per mile within the traffic simulation to observe how reduced access to General Purpose Lane exits may impact routing behavior for the entirety of individual trips, from trip origin to trip destination, from 5am-11am. Results from three case studies indicated that travel time savings occurred most consistently along routes that contained only arterial and Managed Lane routes, where the travel distance from trip origin to the Managed Lane access point are less than two miles. The research found that travel time savings were most significant in cases when there is extreme congestion along arterial routes and the proximity to the Managed Lane entry from the trip origin is less than two miles.