HOT Lanes Would Continue Incentives for Carpoolers
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
This is Part 2 of a letter questioning the High Occupancy Toll lanes Virginia has proposed for the Interstate 95-395 corridor.
Dear Dr. Gridlock:
The Virginia Department of Transportation's assumption is that very few drivers will pay the toll since it could get expensive. They must not have seen how many people paid $25,000 for a hybrid car to drive in the HOV lanes. Do you think these hybrids were all bought to help the environment?
The current system encourages carpooling and slugging. The HOT proposal adds another option and therefore reduces the number of people who will carpool and slug, putting more cars on the road.
The system is based on drivers setting their transponder correctly. Single occupancy drivers will set theirs to HOT and carpools will set theirs to HOV. This introduces two possible errors: collecting tolls from carpools with their transponder set to HOT and letting HOT drivers not pay tolls by setting their transponder to HOV.
The technology to catch the cheaters is very expensive and very unreliable. Nothing is easier than the current system used to catch violators: Police stand at the end of the exit ramp and pull them over.
The taxpayers already paid for this highway. What makes it okay to sell it to a private company?
Most people do not realize the plan is to charge the tolls 24 hours a day (including weekends) as opposed to the current 5.5 hours of HOV restrictions. The current system distributes traffic, because many drivers travel early or late to use the HOV lanes. If HOT goes into effect, they will pay a toll regardless, therefore removing the incentive to travel early or late when fewer cars are on the highway.
This project is an enormous expense, and the number of cars on the road will only increase as a result. Instead of having two lanes moving freely and three lanes congested, we will have six lanes of congested traffic.
-- William R. Aldridge, Springfield
