Slugging in the I-395 Corridor
Corresponding Author: Jonathan Avner, Whitman, Requardt, and Associates
Presented By: Jonathan Avner, Whitman, Requardt & Associates, LLP
Abstract
Over the past several years informal ride sharing has become more prevalent in the Washington DC region and in some areas has become a formalized mode. One such example is the I-395 Corridor where a terminal has been established at the Pentagon to allow for the pickup or drop off of “slugs”. Allow SOV vehicles to “scrape” or pick up passengers allows for the SOV to become HOV3 and thus use the HOV facility in the corridor. Throughout the I-395 and I-95 corridors, locations have been identified for pickup and drop off locations.
As part of the I-395 HOT Lane Conversion project, the transfer of SOV to HOV and slugging were incorporated as part of the travel demand modeling and traffic forecasting component. The presentation will present how the SOV trips were identified and thus converted to HOV through the duration of the corridor. This shift in mode type only represents the interim leg of the trip as the origin to pickup and drop-off to destination portions are still modeled as SOV. The presentation will discuss how the calibration of the model and impacts to the base case (2015) and forecast build and no-build scenarios.
As ride sharing programs continue to evolve, it will become more important in identifying how to capture the trips within the model structure. The treatment of slugging in the I-395 corridor provides a simplistic data driven approach but does not fully capture the shift in mode choice that may occur over time.