Analysis of Toll Discounts on Nationwide Expressway in Japan

Abstract As for the expressway toll, deployment of the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system enabled setting various toll levels by time of the day. A variety of toll discounts have been applied to tackle with road transport issues and for economic stimulation. For expressways managed by Japan’s three expressway companies (NEXCO Central, NEXCO East and NEXCO West), this study performs 1) elucidation of the change in the traffic conditions, user properties, etc. associated with toll discounts by means of traffic data, ETC user data, etc., 2) traffic assignment simulations for the nationwide road network, and 3) grasping of the effects of each toll discount through consumer surplus analysis using the simulation results.