Article
ESTIMATION OF VALUE OF TIME OF TOLL ROAD USERS IN INDIA
DOI: 10.7708/ijtte.2020.10(4).09
10 / 4 / 508-518 Pages
Author(s)
Rajorshi Sen Gupta - Department of Economics, BITS Pilani KK Birla Goa Campus, India -
Abstract
Toll road projects in India have been facing the problem of overestimated revenue forecasts. Given the importance of toll road users’ value of time (VOT) and consequently willingness to pay (WTP) on expected toll revenue, there is dearth of information regarding VOT of toll road users in India. This paper addresses this important gap in literature by providing a methodology to estimate VOT in the absence of primary survey data. Using 74 origin-destination pairs involving a toll road and an alternative non-tolled road, a unique database was prepared to estimate travel time saved (TTS) and VOT of seven different user categories of vehicles. Each of the seven user categories are found to be characterized by different VOT. The user heterogeneity in terms of VOT is an important finding which needs to be accounted for while conducting revenue estimates and economic feasibility analysis of proposed toll roads. Moreover, point estimates of VOT have limited application in conducting toll road feasibility analysis. Using stochastic TTS data, it is found that VOT of different user categories follow LogNormal distribution(s). The estimated projections on VOT can prove to be useful in improving the toll revenue forecasting in the context of India. The methodology can also be applied to other developing countries in the absence of primary data on VOT and WTP of potential toll road users.
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Acknowledgements:
The authors are grateful to Vasu Mohan Gupta for providing excellent support during the data collection phase of this project.
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