HOT lanes

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Originally posted by Admin
[br]We (as slugs) must voice our concern with this HOT concept. If anyone has information on who to contact please post it on the web or email me directly!


Here is the article. You can find it at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14863-2003Jun4.html


Toll Lanes' Concept Catching On
Planners, Officials Discuss Prices at Regional Meeting

By Katherine Shaver
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 5, 2003; Page B01


Traffic planners and public officials said yesterday that they sense increasing political support for giving motorists the option of buying their way out of congestion by paying tolls to use free-flowing carpool lanes.

With money for new roads, buses and trains scarce and traffic growing steadily worse, the officials said, they have few other ways to raise money to ease the Washington region's legendary backups. The toll income could be used to fund new transit and road projects, while making more efficient use of existing road space, supporters said.

Yesterday, more than 200 state and local transportation planners, politicians, academics and engineers gathered for the region's first major conference to discuss ways of pricing lanes. Just a few years ago, organizers said, such a discussion would have drawn fewer than 10 people.

"I think people are recognizing that the [traffic] problem continues to get worse, and there's a willingness to try new things," said Ronald Kirby, transportation director for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which co-sponsored the conference with the Federal Highway Administration. "People are becoming more and more aware that there's a serious revenue problem . . . We have no other solutions on the horizon."

Pierce Homer, Virginia's deputy secretary of transportation, called the palpable level of enthusiasm in the Grand Hyatt meeting room "very significant."

"This is a serious question being asked in a lot of regions around the country: Are there market-based solutions to congestion?" Homer said.

In high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, lone motorists may pay a toll to use the faster-moving carpool lanes. The tolls are deducted from prepaid accounts via electronic transponders on vehicles, similar to the "Smart Tag" transponders that allow motorists to breeze through toll booths.

Toll prices change throughout the day, with the highest prices during the morning and afternoon rush. The lanes remain free for carpoolers. The toll is always high enough to ensure that the lanes don't bog down. HOT lanes don't necessarily reduce traffic congestion, supporters say, but they help transportation departments manage it better by filling unused space in carpool lanes and giving motorists an incentive to drive outside the peak periods.

Before this year, the effort to create HOT lanes in the Washington region appeared to have stalled. The only local study came to an abrupt, controversial end in 2001 . Parris N. Glendening (D), who was then the governor of Maryland, canceled a HOT lane study for Route 50 through Prince George's County, saying such lanes would be unfair to lower-income drivers.

Maryland recently revived its study of HOT lanes, this time on Interstate 270 through Montgomery County. Virginia has asked for federal money to analyze HOT lanes on Northern Virginia highways.

A private company also has proposed using toll lanes to finance widening the Capital Beltway in Northern Virginia.

Adding to the momentum, supporters say, is the Bush administration's recent proposal to permit states to impose tolls on federal roads and interstate highways. The administration doesn't actively endorse the idea of HOT lanes but thinks they are "worth discussing" to better manage congestion and reduce air pollution, said Emil Frankel, assistant U.S. secretary for transportation policy.

"I think everyone acknowledges we have financial issues, and we need to think about all our options," Frankel said.

Many transportation planners have supported the idea of "value pricing" on highways for years, but hot lanes have been a tough political sell. Critics have dubbed them "Lexus Lanes," arguing that they favor the wealthy and are a double tax on roads that motorists already pay for through the gas tax.

Mid-Atlantic AAA spokesman Lon Anderson, the most vocal HOT lane critic, said he would support them only on new or wider highways and only if the toll revenue went primarily to expand road capacity.

"Shouldn't the goal be to move everyone at a more reasonable speed during rush hour than just those people who can pay?" Anderson said.

Conference organizers said they hoped the meeting would begin the public education that had helped overcome political opposition in some cities where HOT lanes now are in use.

Officials involved in HOT lane projects in Houston and in San Diego and Orange County in California told the conference that surveys showed similar income levels among drivers in the toll lanes and the regular lanes. Most drivers used them only when they were in a hurry, officials said.

Maryland Del. Carol S. Petzold (D-Montgomery) said HOT lanes could work on I-270 and on the intercounty connector proposed for Montgomery and Prince George's counties. The toll revenue could fund construction of the connector road, a transit link between Bethesda and New Carrollton and a rail line across the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

"The political reluctance is that you're charging money, which people think of as a tax," Petzold said.

"We need to change that attitude from HOT lanes being a tax increase to being a traffic management tool."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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