Novel Big Data-supported dynamic toll charging system: Impact assessment on Portugal’s shadow-toll highways

Traffic congestion is a huge problem in many countries. It affects not only the inner workings of cities but also the quality of life of the people that endure it. In Portugal, traffic congestion happens mainly on national/urban roads, and this phenomenon has increased since the introduction of the so called shadow-toll systems in highways that were free to use. This work proposes a toll charging system that relies on a novel dynamic congestion charging scheme, supported by state of the art Big Data technologies, in order to shift traffic from national/urban roads to tolled highways, taking into account not only the Quality of Service of the highways and national roads, but also the competitiveness of toll prices for users. This Intelligent Transportation System was tested and validated in a real-world scenario with one of the biggest freight logistics companies in Portugal and with the Portuguese public road infrastructure operator.This work was performed under the scope of the OPTIMUM Project - Multi-source Big Data Fusion Driven Proactivity for Intelligent Mobility, grant agreement number 636160-2, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.Accepted versio