What to do in response to toll increases: A behavioral analysis of freight carriers in New York State

Freight carriers’ behavior greatly varies given the number of parties involved in the process from the origin end to the destination end and the heterogeneity of commodities. Accordingly, their reaction to transportation policies including road pricing is composed of multidimensional choices, e.g., they can take a series of actions in multiple stages in response to policies, which have been overlooked in the literature. To better understand carriers’ behavior, this paper investigated freight carriers’ behavior in reaction to toll increases in New York State using a stated preference survey. The following four reactions in response to hypothetical toll increase scenarios were jointly investigated: (a) passing on the costs to receivers; (b) reducing delivery frequency; (c) reducing travel distance on toll roads; and (d) changing time of day of travel. The descriptive analysis showed that reducing mileage on toll roads and passing on the costs are the two most preferred reactions while changing delivery time to avoid high toll is the least favorable reaction. A multivariate Probit model was also developed to quantitatively explore factors affecting the willingness to take the reactions. As a result, all the four reactions were positively correlated, suggesting that the reactions selected by carriers are complementary to each other. Factors (including commodity type and company size) affecting each reaction were investigated. Implications for planning and policymaking based on the results were also discussed.