Student-Driven Innovation
With high-occupancy toll lanes increasingly being considered a means to relieve congestion and generate revenue, graduate student Venktesh Pandey decided to explore pricing strategies to make the most of them.
And he recently received the Milton Pikarsky Memorial Award from the Council of University Transportation Centers for his work. The nationally recognized award is given annually for the best Ph.D. dissertation and M.S. thesis in the field of science and technology in transportation studies.
“His thesis is aimed at better pricing strategies for dynamic toll lanes, like the ones recently opened on Austin’s MoPac Expressway,” said Stephen Boyles, Cockrell School professor and Pandey’s advisor. “Finding the right pricing strategy is difficult, and past research has had to make some severe assumptions like the facility only having one entrance and exit point or having perfect knowledge of driver behavior.”
Pandey’s research takes important steps to making these models more realistic, which can help dynamic toll lanes be as effective as possible.