Slugs' Fear HOT Lanes Will End Free Rides
Carpoolers' Worries Not Fully Weighed, N.Va. Official Says
By Eric M. Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 10, 2008; B01
Commuters who carpool along the Interstate 95/395 corridor to the Pentagon or the District continue to raise concerns about the proposed HOT lanes that will replace the HOV lanes from Dumfries to the 14th Street bridge.
The carpoolers, also known as "slugs," accept free rides from strangers, allowing drivers to use HOV lanes that require a minimum of three passengers per vehicle during rush hours. The slugging system in Northern Virginia is considered to be among the most extensive and successful in the country.
Slugs fear that allowing toll-payers into the existing carpool lanes will tempt affluent drivers who now welcome passengers to drive solo instead. Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large), chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and a frequent slugger, last week called for an independent study of how the HOT lanes would affect the impromptu carpooling system. He also complained that the private companies planning the toll lanes have not fully addressed the questions and concerns of slugs and HOV drivers.
Stewart said he is skeptical of the plans because they are taking a system that works and turning it over to private companies. He also raised safety concerns about operating three traffic lanes in the two-lane footprint.
Slugging is thought to date to the early 1970s, when commuters hoping to form carpools for the HOV lanes would gather at bus stops. Slug is the term for a fake coin in a bus farebox, and it is believed bus drivers characterized the waiting carpoolers that way because the commuters, although waiting at bus stops, were not bus riders.
State officials said they have no desire to discourage the practice.
"Why on earth would we be building 6,700 commuter [parking] spots in the corridor if we were not serious about HOV and transit?'' Virginia Transportation Secretary Pierce Homer asked. "Slugging and transit are the most efficient and environmentally friendly transportation alternatives out there."
The goal of the HOT lanes is to use variable pricing to keep the lanes free-flowing. There is no upper limit on toll rates. Drivers who don't want to pay can use the free, non-HOT lanes. The companies that plan to convert the two-lane HOV facility into a three-lane toll highway say they will still allow carpools of three or more to ride free. But hybrid cars with fewer than three passengers, which are now largely allowed in HOV lanes, will have to pay the tolls, which could top $1 a mile. The companies also say they will create additional entry and exit points and crack down on cheaters, who they say make up 20 percent of the current HOV traffic flow.
The project also includes $195 million for the state to increase transit along the I-95/395 corridor, said Young Ho Chang, project manager for the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Stewart said he was afraid that the toll lanes would harm sluggers by clogging up the lanes.
"We need some guarantees here, not promises," Stewart said.
Last month, Prince William supervisors passed a resolution demanding all correspondence between VDOT and the companies sponsoring the project, Transurban and Fluor Corp. The resolution also demanded that representatives appear before the board to answer questions by February.
On Thursday, representatives of Transurban and VDOT met with Stewart for a previously scheduled meeting to update him and other Prince William officials. Stewart invited the media and said he hoped the companies and VDOT would be more forthcoming with their plans.
Experts are divided over the impact the project might have on sluggers. Some think that drivers with the financial means would pay the tolls to avoid the hassles of picking up passengers. Others say that slugging will increase as drivers try to avoid paying the fluctuating tolls.
If traffic bogs down, "we'll just raise the price until we chase everyone else off," said Timothy Young, development manager for Transurban, who attended the meeting with Stewart.
During the meeting, company officials declined to share projections about how many vehicles might use the HOT lanes, saying the information was proprietary. They also said many other financial and operational details were not available because the companies have not completed negotiations with VDOT, which owns the HOV lanes.
Company officials said they have held focus group discussions with sluggers but did not commit to an independent study, as requested by Stewart.
Young said the company and VDOT have held dozens of informational meetings with stakeholders in Prince William and other jurisdictions the project would affect. The project, which would extend the current HOV lanes south to Garrisonville Road in Stafford County, is undergoing review for federal environmental approval. He said he hoped that VDOT would complete the environmental process by the end of the month and that the project would receive federal approval by the end of the year. Then the companies and VDOT would negotiate a financial agreement by next fall.
A second phase, which would extend HOT lanes to Massaponax in Spotsylvania County, has just begun the federal environmental process, which could take 18 months to complete.
Transportation
Friday, November 14, 2008
DC sluggers worry HOT lanes will destroy their free rides
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
LA Moves towards More HOT Lanes
News and Information Congestion pricing is the concept of charging for the use of a transportation facility, such as a roadway, based on the level of traffic congestion. The greater the level of congestion, usually occurring during morning and evening rush hours, the higher the cost to use the facility. Congestion pricing is not a panacea for congestion relief, but it is an important tool that many cities throughout the world have instituted or are exploring as a means to reduce congestion. It has been proven to ease congestion by shifting some rush hour highway traffic to other transportation modes such as vanpools and freeway express buses or to off-peak periods by charging for use of selected roads during a selected time. It has worked successfully in London, Stockholm, Singapore, Minneapolis, San Diego, and Orange County. Because it provides another alternative to managing traffic flow, which is growing increasingly worse. To fulfill our obligation to the people of Los Angeles County, Metro must consider all reasonable options that may contribute to improving our mobility and quality of life. As with any complex issue, many factors contribute to identifying and implementing solutions. At least a few of these challenges include increased population, increased flow of material goods on roadways, more auto ownership and declining funding from gas tax revenue and state and federal governments. Congestion pricing is one approach for efficiently managing capacity on our busy roadways by: In the United States, the conversion of high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes is one way to manage congestion. When driving on a HOT lane, the driver pays a toll that varies according to: Monitoring congestion makes it possible to control the traffic levels at all times and maintain the traffic speed at 50 mph. Congestion pricing, when integrating with other traffic management options, would help improve the travel speed of the managed lanes as well as the general-purpose lane. What kind of demonstration projects is Metro considering for the Los Angeles region? Under the current proposal, carpool lanes would be converted to HOT lanes along the following freeways: Metro has proposed a one-year demonstration pilot project to convert certain carpool lanes into High Occupancy Toll (HOT) Lanes to give drivers (whether solo or carpooler) the option to drive on these facilities (at an minimum speed of 50 m.p.h.) in return for toll payments. When would the tolls be added to the demonstration projects? Implementation of the one year pilot program (I-10, I-110 and I-210) is expected to start summer 2009. Why select these three projects? These demonstration projects meet one or more basic criteria for successful congestion pricing: How would the toll be paid or collected? The latest technology involves an easy to use electronic "fast pass" collection system so that patrons do not have to wait in line at toll booths. Are there any HOT lanes being used in Southern California? Yes. Two examples of HOT lanes in Southern California include SR 91 in Orange County and I-15 in San Diego. In December of 1995, Orange County opened four 10-mile toll lanes in the median of the existing State Route 91; actual toll revenues in fiscal year 2007 amounted to $44 million, about $5.0 million more than projected. Since December 1996 solo drivers on an eight-mile stretch of the I-15 in northern San Diego County have been allowed to use the express lanes on San Diego County's I-15 for a fee, while carpoolers continue to travel free of charge. Will education programs describe how the public can reduce congestion? Yes. Educating and engaging the public regarding commuting choices is part of the outreach program on congestion reduction that Metro will conduct over the next several months. An early step in encouraging the public to adjust their commuting behavior is to remind the public that viable alternative transit options exist such as express bus service, adequate park-and-ride lot capacity, and efficient commuter rail and vanpool options. According to the 2000 Census, 70 percent of Los Angeles County commuters drive alone to work, and only 7 percent use transit. Consequently, outreach to major employers in the region will be particularly important. Employers and employees are primary users of road infrastructure and key stakeholders in the development of financial or other incentives to reduce congestion. Such incentives may include employer-paid transit subsidies, telecommuting options, and staggered work shifts. How much would it cost to use a "toll" lane? Various pricing formulas will be evaluated in the Metro study. In other metropolitan areas tolls range from $4.00 to $10.00 during peak commute hours. Pricing will be determined as we develop our operating plan. What would those funds generated be used for? Revenues generated by the tolls will be used first to pay for the operations of the managed lanes. It is expected that any additional revenues generated from the tolls will be used to improve or enhanced transportation services along or near the managed corridors. These may include additional bus and rail services, roadway improvements, and other complementary services. Doesn't congestion pricing favor wealthy commuters? Congestion pricing benefits all because it provides more options to commuters from all walks of life. Each commuter may select which mode makes the most sense to her or him in terms of cost and travel time. At certain times of day, the least expensive travel options—ride sharing and transit—may also be the fastest. Revenues generated from tolls not needed for the operations of the lanes would be used to fund improvements to mass transit, which many low income families depend on. Additionally, buses and vanpools would be exempt from any HOT-lane charges. This means that anyone commuting by these modes—whatever his or her income—would travel without paying the toll. Why can't carpool lanes help more with congestion? Perhaps the most serious challenge Los Angeles County carpool lanes face is that they are now so popular that they are getting too crowded. Right now, several carpool lanes in Los Angeles County are close to reaching a maximum desirable operating capacity. To ensure these lanes continue to be effective, we must find ways to better manage the flow. One of the options is by implementing managed lane concepts such as congestion pricing. Metro, Caltrans and the Southern California Association of Governments in coordination with Los Angeles County and other major transportation stakeholders are applying for funding for the Congestion-Reduction Demonstration Initiatives under the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) to do demonstration projects that involve converting High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes to High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes along the: There are actually two separate activities taking place at Metro in pursuit of roadway pricing options. First is the USDOT grant which approval may determined as early as January 2008. If so, the demonstrations could commence about 18 months later. The second activity is a study directed by Metro's Board that requires completion of a countywide study to produce no less than three recommendations for roadway pricing within Los Angeles County. These demonstration projects would commence the following year.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Strong Case for HOT : WSJ Editorial
HOT Lanes' Allure
Mitigating growth's impact -- and paying for it
Thursday, May 10, 2007; A22
NO INCANTATION or conjurer's trick will magically ease the traffic clogging the asphalt arteries on which Washington area commuters depend. Every projection suggests that the region's population growth will yield additional congestion that is likely to outstrip the road network's capacity to absorb it. The most that can be expected from planners -- and it is already a lot -- is that they embrace forward-thinking strategies to mitigate growth's impact.
By that measure, a proposal to build high-occupancy toll lanes along Interstates 95 and 395 in Virginia, along with a similar plan already in the works for a segment of the Capital Beltway in Virginia, makes sense. So-called HOT lanes, in use for more than a decade in California and elsewhere, use congestion pricing to prevent backups; electronic tolls on designated lanes would rise and fall according to demand, thereby ensuring that traffic keeps moving. Carpoolers, emergency vehicles, drivers badly pressed for time and, yes, the cost-is-no-object crowd would cruise. Everybody else would continue suffering what they suffer now -- stop-and-go rush hours.
Grumbling is to be expected. Although the regular lanes would remain free, no one really knows how much the HOT lanes might charge when traffic gets heavy. The private developers that would build and operate the toll lanes say that a trip from the Pentagon to Prince William Parkway, a distance of 28 miles, might cost $10 or $11 at rush hour; other estimates run twice as high, closer to $1 per mile. While the developers and state officials say there is every intention to make the toll lanes free of charge for cars with a driver and two or more passengers, there is no guarantee that will happen; if financial or traffic projections are wrong, state law could conceivably be changed so that carpoolers would have to carry an extra passenger, or even pay some amount. Moreover, the proposal is under attack from suburban "slugs" who form impromptu carpools. The "slugs" fear that allowing toll-payers into the existing carpool lanes will tempt BMW and Lexus drivers who now welcome passengers to drive in splendid solitude, whatever the cost.
Maybe. But if that is the case, then rich drivers (or their employers) will also be subsidizing a major transit and highway upgrade for the region. For the consortium behind the HOT lane proposal, Fluor Virginia Inc. and Transurban of Australia, has sweetened the deal considerably by putting $390 million on the table to operate an enormous augmentation in bus service (along with scores of new buses) in the I-95 corridor as well as on the Beltway, in addition to creating new parking lots with several thousand spaces; new interchanges; and a major improvement to I-95 to eliminate what is now a daily bottleneck of 10 miles or more at Dumfries in Prince William County. These are potentially critical improvements to the region's transportation capacity.
HOT lanes are not a panacea. Northbound drivers entering the District will still face a morning bottleneck as they approach the 14th Street Bridge, where the toll lanes merge with regular traffic, and HOT lanes could make it even worse. Inside the Beltway, where an additional toll lane will be added without expanding I-395's footprint, traffic engineers will have to plan carefully to accommodate traffic on three somewhat narrow toll lanes and smaller-than-ideal shoulders without compromising safety. But getting out of the city should be easier in the evening, and so should connections between the Beltway and Interstates 95 and 395. Like most traffic modifications, HOT lanes are a tradeoff, but this proposal looks like one whose benefits outweigh the costs.
Pilot HOT Lanes Working Around the Nation
HOT Lanes Advance in Seven States
By Robert W. Poole, Jr.
Reason Foundation
3/12/04
High-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes made major gains in 2003 as federal, state, and local officials endorsed either the concept or specific project proposals.
A December 29 article on the Washington Post’s Web site described succinctly how HOT lanes work: “The carpool [HOT] lanes remain free to carpools, van pools, and buses, while other motorists pay a toll. The tolls are collected via electronic transponders, to prevent tollbooths from slowing or stopping traffic. To make sure the lanes don’t fill up with cheaters, effective HOT lanes have room built in for police to ensure that vehicles have transponders.”
HOT lanes are most effective, noted the article, when “The toll’s price changes throughout the day to keep traffic moving, even during rush hours. When the lanes start to bog down, the price goes up to encourage motorists to leave the lanes or discourage them from entering. As road space frees up, the price drops. The fluctuating prices not only keep traffic moving, advocates say, but also ‘stretch the highway’s capacity by encouraging drivers to use it outside peak times.’”
According to the article, “HOT-lane advocates also tout the long-term potential for such lanes to improve transit.” If a network of HOT lanes could be developed long-term to connect free-flowing toll lanes on several major highways, it could form a seamless web for express bus service.
Promising Possibilities
The Washington Beltway (I-495) is one of the highest-profile locations for proposed HOT lanes, and an unsolicited proposal to add two such lanes in each direction on 12 miles of the Beltway received the formal endorsement of Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board in July 2003. The Fluor Daniel company submitted a detailed proposal for the $630 million project in October.
“We are out of money in our transportation trust funds throughout our region,” said Lon Anderson, spokesman for the Mid-Atlantic AAA. “There’s no money to make the wholesale changes many would like to see. HOT lanes offer that opportunity.”
The HOT lanes alternative will be included in the region’s ongoing Final Environmental Impact Statement, to be wrapped up by December 2004. The project has strong local support (e.g., unanimous endorsement by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors) but is opposed by the Fairfax Coalition for Smarter Growth, which is promoting light rail instead.
Philip Shucet, head of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), has praised the proposal as “a shining example” of a public-private partnership. VDOT will look at further applications of HOT lanes in the DC metro area using a $500,000 grant from the federal Value Pricing Pilot Program, announced in July 2003. The pilot program is also supporting further work on several other HOT lanes projects:
* A $1 million grant will help Colorado DOT plan the conversion of the High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes on I-25 North to HOT lanes.
* Florida DOT will do detailed traffic and revenue studies of a potential HOV-to-HOT conversion on I-95 in Miami.
* Texas DOT will study the addition of HOT lanes to a 15-mile section of the Northeast Corridor in San Antonio.
Other Positive Steps
In August 2003, the Atlanta Value Pricing Advisory Task Force released its report after a nearly two-year effort to evaluate how traffic pricing might help address metro Atlanta’s severe congestion problems.
“Paying the Price for Congestion” concludes, “HOT/managed lanes and other congestion pricing strategies hold the greatest promise for implementing value pricing in this region at this time.”
The task force looked at the possible addition of HOT lanes on 17 miles of Georgia 400 north of I-285; shifting from flat-rate to variable pricing on the tolled portion of Georgia 400; and adding HOT lanes to Georgia 316. Georgia DOT is also looking into the possibility of a network of HOT lanes on the entire freeway system.
A HOT lanes network was proposed in July 2003 by the highest-ranking official in greater Houston, Harris County Judge Robert Eckels. Eckels asked county officials to look at the feasibility of having the Harris County Toll Road Authority take over the 100 miles of HOV lanes now operated by Houston Metro, the regional transit agency.
The HOV lanes were developed originally as express busways, but were opened to carpools because they have significant excess capacity. Two of those facilities on I-10 and US 290 already have been converted to HOT lanes, and the I-10 HOT lanes will be greatly expanded in a $1.4 billion reconstruction project that began in June 2003. Metro would be ensured access for its large fleet of express buses but would no longer have to pay to maintain the limited-access lanes. Toll revenues will make it possible to expand the network of lanes.
Minnesota and Washington State also are moving into the HOT lanes camp. Minnesota enacted new legislation in summer 2003 that permits the conversion of HOV lanes to HOT lanes. The first project, as recommended by a Value Pricing Task Force, will convert the HOV lanes on I-394. Washington’s Transportation Commission directed the state DOT in January 2003 to study the feasibility of converting an existing HOV lane to HOT. In December, the state DOT decided to proceed with detailed planning for converting the SR167 HOV lanes to HOT lanes.
The nation’s pioneer HOT lanes project, the 91 Express Lanes in Orange County, California, had another price increase. The busiest hours of the week--eastbound on Thursday and Friday between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m.--will now cost motorists $5.50 instead of the previous $4.75. The August 1, 2003 increase is the seventh since the Express Lanes opened in December 1995.
Though political pressures led the Orange County Transportation Association (OCTA) to buy out the privately developed project effective January 1, 2004, the hopes of some officials that tolls could be reduced or eliminated have been dashed.
In addition to needing toll revenues to pay off more than $100 million in construction bonds, OCTA officials have come to appreciate the worth of the value pricing pioneered on these lanes. It’s value pricing--increasingly higher rates during the busiest periods--that keeps the Express Lanes free-flowing and able to handle more vehicles/lane/hour at rush hour than the congested regular lanes.
Robert W. Poole Jr. is director of transportation studies and founder of the Reason Foundation.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Approach to HOT Lanes around the US
HOT Lane Conundrums
By Robert W. Poole, Jr.
March 2004
Now that HOT lanes are front-burner issues in most of America's most congested metro areas, feasibility studies are proliferating. Unfortunately, the results are all over the map, leading to understandable confusion among policy-makers.
Consider a pair of very dramatic contrasts. At the end of April, the Virginia DOT announced a development agreement with the Fluor/Transurban coalition under which their planned addition of four HOT lanes to the Washington Beltway will go forward, supported 100% by the toll revenues generated by the new lanes. By contrast, the feasibility study of a network of HOT lanes for Atlanta (a metro area whose annual congestion cost, as measured by Texas Transportation Institute, is nearly as great as that of the DC metro area), concluded that, at best, HOT lane revenues can cover operating and maintenance costs but only the incremental capital costs of doing the lanes as HOT rather than HOV (i.e., none of the actual lane construction costs).
The other contrast is between Denver and Minneapolis/St. Paul. The feasibility study of a network of express toll lanes in Denver concluded that toll revenues could cover at least 50-60% of the capital costs of a $4.8 billion system. But the study of a $3.5 billion network of (mostly) express toll lanes in the Twin Cities found that toll revenues could cover an average of 22% of capital costs. And note well that the annual congestion cost, as calculated by TTI, is almost identical for these two metro areas. That should be an indication of the strength of underlying demand for congestion relief. But the study results are surprisingly different.
I've spent some time going through the Atlanta, Denver, and Twin Cities studies, attempting to figure out why the findings are so different. It's not easy going, since they were done by different firms, all highly qualified in transportation modeling, and the studies are quite detailed. Here is what I've learned so far.
My first thought was that the difference might be accounted for by different policies toward free passage by HOVs. If you give away the valuable space in costly-to-build HOT lanes to two-person car-pools (HOV-2), there will be little space left to sell to paying customers. But that hypothesis did not hold up. The Atlanta study results I cited above were based on the HOV-4+ version, under which only HOVs with four or more occupants would get free passage. The Twin Cities study included a couple of converted HOV lanes which would let HOV-2s go free, but all the new construction (the bulk of the network) would be express toll lanes with no HOV freebies. Denver was modeled as all-ETL. And by contrast, the 100% self-supporting Beltway HOT lanes would allow HOV-3s (of which there are many in the area) to go free.
My second hypothesis was that the studies made different assumptions about HOT lane toll rates. This idea did explain some of the differences. The Georgia study used toll rates of between $.02 and $.14 per mile, clearly far below what experience has shown to be the market-clearing price for congestion relief, at least in Southern California (on I-15 and SR 91). The Minnesota study used three rates--$.10, $.30, and $.50—but seemed to use the two higher ones very sparingly. The Denver study used a complete range of $.05 to $.50, and seemed more realistic in applying the higher rates.
And here's another crucial difference. The Atlanta study appears not to have adjusted its toll rates for inflation. This makes no sense, since value pricing depends on keeping the price at a market-clearing level on into the future (which means at least annual CPI increases). Traditional toll roads were often financed based on constant toll rates to cover constant annual debt service, relying on growth in traffic volume to increase the revenue over time. But a HOT lane's revenue profile over time is dramatically different. This can be seen in tables in the Denver study, showing, for each freeway segment with an ETL, the projected annual revenue. For example, I-25 ETLs (Scenario 1) are forecast to generate $15 million in 2010 and $93 million in 2040; that’s a lot more than could be generated simply by growth in traffic volume!
The studies also used somewhat different definitions of financial feasibility. The Atlanta study compared the annualized capital costs with annual toll revenue in 2030. The Twin Cities study compared the present value of the revenue stream (2008 to 2030) with the present value of capital costs. But the Denver study did something similar, but also took into account bond financing costs and a 1.75X coverage ratio on senior debt, making its test of financial feasibility more stringent than those used in the other two studies. Yet it still showed greater ability to finance lane construction costs out of toll revenues.
Yet another difference is in the modeling methodologies. All three studies—Atlanta, the Twin Cities, and Denver--used the existing regional travel demand models, which we all know were not designed to take into account the effect of priced lanes. But each tweaked the models differently, and the Denver study refers to the subsequent use of a micro-model of each corridor, which may account for more of the difference in results.
I draw at least two conclusions from this brief comparative assessment. First, to some extent the transportation planning community has not quite digested the kind of revenue profile which a HOT lane can produce over, say, a 30-year period. So some studies are probably under-estimating the revenue and financing potential. On the other hand, adequately modeling HOT lanes, taking into account their great sensitivity to conditions in the adjacent general purpose lanes, is still at a relatively crude stage. Screening studies of a large number of corridors all at once are probably useful for weeding out corridors with low potential. But their estimates of revenue and extent of construction cost coverage should be taken with large grains of salt. It’s not until we get to "investment-grade" traffic and revenue studies of specific corridors that we're going to have a realistic idea of the extent to which toll revenues can actually pay for such projects.
Robert W. Poole Jr. is director of transportation studies and founder of the Reason Foundation.
