C&M specializes in the production and review of traffic and revenue (T&R) forecasts to support the conceptual analysis, feasibility analysis, planning, and financing of tolled facilities
C&M has provided T&R work to various public and private entities in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Colorado, Oregon, Washington State, and California. C&M’s experience as T&R Engineer includes work on more than 800 miles of tolled roads and tunnels on behalf of 18 different Trusts. C&M’s experience includes executing tasks as delineated by Trust agreements, preparing T&R projections at various levels, studying proposed plans (e.g., toll plans, changes in operational procedures), developing and maintaining travel demand computer models, interacting with and peer-reviewing other involved agents, and preparing and presenting official reports to Trusts’ executive branches and other governing bodies.
Excellent Forecasted vs. Observed Traffic Record
C&M has a proven history of providing reliable traffic forecasts for Greenfield and Brownfield projects, for individual toll facilities, and for toll systems.
Financial Community Experience
C&M has interacted with banks lending to private projects, financial advisors, underwriters, rating agencies, credit enhancers, monoline insurers, and FHWA’s TIFIA program, assisting in the successful financing of $16 Billion in debt plus equity supported by C&M’s studies. The recognition of C&M by the financial community has enabled its rapid expansion throughout the United States.
Complex Simulations of Toll Facilities
With an increasing need for congestion management in many regions, C&M can assist clients in adopting more sophisticated toll demand forecast approaches in their travel demand modeling framework, providing decision makers with better tools. C&M performs complex mesoscopic and microscopic simulations for transportation projects to study operational efficiency, analyze traffic impacts, and provide support for stakeholder presentations. C&M has performed several studies involving dynamic tolling and developed a mesoscopic modeling methodology that dynamically assigns traffic to the tolled facilities to provide a particular Level of Service (LOS), taking into consideration the time-varying nature of traffic flows and producing more realistic estimates of speeds, queue lengths, delays, and congestion. Microscopic simulation can then be used to verify that the facility operates within a certain LOS at specific locations.
Managed Lanes Experience
C&M has ample experience with Managed Lane projects in Texas, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, and Georgia, for both private and public entities. Recent Managed Lane projects includes I-66 HOT Lanes in Virginia, I-77 Managed Lanes in North Carolina, and SH 288 Managed Lanes in Texas.
Risk Analysis of T&R Forecasts
C&M has developed a state-of-the-practice forecast analysis technique to assess the expected probability of a project achieving the forecasted T&R. This methodology incorporates feedback from underwriters, credit enhancers, commercial banks, and rating agencies in the United States, Latin America, and Europe.
Experience in Public-Private Partnerships
C&M has analyzed the feasibility of toll road projects involving financing from public, private, and hybrid sources for turnpike authorities, private developers, and concessionaires at all levels. C&M has also assisted turnpike authorities in the development of legal concession frameworks, the management of concession-award processes, and the provision of independent engineering services for the oversight of toll road operations on behalf of trusts and bondholders.
Inter-Urban and Intra-Urban Experience
C&M has worked on inter-urban and intra-urban projects in Texas, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, and Latin America. As a project crosses rapidly-growing suburban environments, we use our specific experience in complex urban/suburban projects that require very detailed and sophisticated modeling techniques. Examples of these settings are a Collin County connection to heavily used urban toll lanes (Dallas North Tollway) in Texas; SH 121 in Dallas, TX; and I-495 (Capital Beltway) in Virginia.
Recent Traffic and Revenue Studies by C&M
I-66 Express Lanes Outside the Capital Beltway, Virginia
The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) and the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT), in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), have proposed to convert a 25-mile segment of I-66 into an express lane facility. C&M performed an Investment Grade Traffic and Revenue study to aid the procurement of the project as a Public-Private Partnership by VDOT. C&M provided an independent toll revenue forecast of the Project over a 46-year concession period. Tolls were assumed to be collected beginning on January 1, 2021 via an AET system.
I-66 is part of the national Interstate Highway System and runs in an east-west direction from Middletown, VA to Washington, DC. The Project is an approximately 25-mile segment of I-66 between US 15 (James Madison Highway) in Prince William County, VA to the west and I-495 (Capital Beltway) in Fairfax County, VA to the east.
I-73, South Carolina
The I-73 project consists of two proposed sections: the southern section and the northern section. The 42-mile southern section will extend from the Myrtle Beach/Conway area to the northwest, intersecting I-95 just west of Dillon. The purpose of the southern section is to provide an interstate link between the Myrtle Beach region and I-95 to serve residents, businesses, and tourists by improving travel times, level of service, and national/regional connectivity, as well as facilitating hurricane evacuations. The 38-mile northern section will extend from I-95 just west of Dillion to I-73/74 in the Rockingham/Hamlet, NC region. The northern section is less dependent on tourists and will primarily serve to improve national connectivity in conjunction with proposed “High Priority Corridor 5” construction and/or facility upgrades.
Subsequent to the study’s finalization, SCDOT requested the analysis of additional scenarios for contributing facilities as tolled and untolled roads. SCDOT expects the results of C&M’s study and the scenarios to advance the construction of I-73 in the near future and possibly necessitate an Investment Grade T&R study.
NTTA's Special Projects System, Texas
C&M was contracted by the North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) to perform an Investment Grade Traffic and Revenue study for the Special Projects System (SPS), which currently consists of the Chisholm Trail Parkway (CTP) and the President George Bush Turnpike-Western Extension (PGBT-WE). This study provided a T&R forecast of the SPS over a 50-year period and served as an update to studies previously performed by C&M in 2014: an Investment Grade T&R study of the CTP and an Intermediate T&R study of the PGBT-WE. As these are AET facilities, C&M worked closely with NTTA to reliably forecast Toll Tag penetration, leakage, and Pay-By-Plate parameters.
One important update in this study compared to previous studies of the SPS was the use of demographic data from the North Central Texas Council of Governments’ (NCTCOG) latest Metropolitan Transportation Plan: Mobility 2040. This new data—in combination with new traffic counts collected for this study and C&M’s experience with the SPS—allowed for precise fine-tuning of several parameters in developing the T&R forecasts, including Value of Time (VOT), AVI and ZipCash shares, and ZipCash reduction factors.