Trip Characteristics, Carpooling, and Willingness to Pay for HOT Lanes Survey

Hello,

We are conducting a survey for a research project in which we will be focusing on understanding Deerfoot Trail commuters' perceptions and behavioural responses towards a hypothetical tolled facility on Deerfoot Trail (Highway 2) in the City of Calgary. The study area for this survey is between McKnight Boulvard and Peigan Trail.

A High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lane is free of charge for vehicles with 2 or more occupants. If a single occupancy vehicle wants to use the HOT lane, he/she may pay a small fee to obtain access. The fee or toll is dependent on the current number and speed of vehicles on the HOT lane to maintain a high level of service.

We kindly ask you to participate in this web survey so that your opinion is represented in our study. Participants must be 18 years or older to complete the survey. This survey is designed to be as short as possible and will take approximately 10 minutes to complete. Please answer every question in each section in order to proceed to subsequent sections. The risks associated with participation are minimal. There are no direct benefits to subjects. However, it is hoped that participation will help researchers learn more about how people respond to new strategies that might alleviate traffic congestion.

The data collected will be treated with strict confidentiality and only Dr. Lina Kattan, Mohammad Ansari and Kathy Chan will have access to data. The hardcopies of the returned questionnaires will be kept for 5 years in a locked cabinet at the University of Calgary and the electronic format will be kept for 10 years in a password-protected computer. Any information that is obtained in connection with this study will remain confidential and only the aggregated data where individual responses are not discernable would be published in a student thesis, journal papers, conference, or other research publications. Please note that completion of the survey will be taken as agreement to participate. Participation in survey is completely anonymous and voluntarily, so please feel free to withdraw at any time. Those questionnaires will not be demanded from participants and will not be included in the data anyway.

This survey has been approved by the Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board of the University of Calgary. If you have any question about the way you have been treated as participant, please contact Mr. Russell Burrows (Telephone: 403-220-3782, Email: rburrows@ucalgary.ca). For any concerns or feedback about the survey please feel free to contact Dr. Lina Kattan (Telephone: 403-220-3010, Email: lkattan@ucalgary.ca).