SECOND OPINION
Toll roads becoming popular
By Cliff Slater
Ten years ago, anyone who brought up the subject of road pricing (now known as value pricing), which is charging drivers for road use during the rush hour, could expect instant abuse. That attitude is changing rapidly.
The early objections were that it would increase the cost for motorists, that it would be a new tax, that it would be regressive in favoring the rich and hurting the poor and that, in any case, toll collecting would be a nuisance and also invade our privacy.
With the experiences gained in recent years with the SR-91 tollway in California's Orange County, Houston's Katy Freeway and San Diego's I-15 tollway, those objections are fading. A federal government poll of Orange County's freeway users showed that after a year's operation, only 10 percent of motorists objected to pricing.
It turns out that these new facilities have advantages that no one quite realized before. For example, many had expected that only the affluent would pay to drive on these tollways, but experience shows that few people of any income amount use it on a regular basis. Most customers are infrequent users avoiding congestion so as not to be late for work or an appointment and working mothers running late who are trying to avoid the late charges at their childcare provider, for example.
Surprisingly, usage cuts across income groups. An indicator of this is that only 5 percent of users sign up for the cost-saving monthly passes.
That's one lesson learned lately. The others are that we should not convert existing freeway lanes from current general use to value-priced lanes; drivers strongly object to that. However, objections to pricing are few when toll revenues allow new lanes to be built — the likely situation for the governor's proposal of a new, reversible HOV tollway along the Leeward Corridor.
Another lesson learned is how tolls can be collected. Originally, tolls were collected at tollbooths. Today, new ones tend to have tolls collected with overhead transponders impacting electronically on prepaid smart cards that are windshield-mounted. That way tolls can be collected anonymously.
Regular tolls do not impact peak hour traffic since drivers pay the same amount whether it is 3 a.m. or 7 a.m. The early value-priced tolls, as in Orange County, were fixed in advance with tolls peaking during the peak of rush hour, as one would expect. However, that did not allow for changes in traffic induced by major ballgames, concerts or bad weather, for example.
To respond to such changes in traffic, San Diego introduced dynamic pricing. Every six minutes, tolls are recalculated, taking into account upstream traffic flows, and then posted some distance ahead of the tollway entrance, giving drivers ample time to choose.
Lower tolls induce more traffic — higher tolls reduce it. Thus, the tolls constantly balance traffic to allow the tollway traffic to be maximized while still free-flowing.
The latest development is dynamically priced HOT lanes, combined HOV and toll lanes. Buses and vanpools ride free — all automobiles pay. HOT lanes have experienced four times the average vehicle occupancy found on regular freeway lanes and, thus, two HOT lanes are the equivalent of eight regular freeway lanes.
HOT lanes are in place in urban areas and have been successful both financially and in public acceptance. Each of them is being expanded, and additional cities are in the study or implementation phase.
The advantage is that the toll collections provide funding for the new lanes while offering buses and vans a faster ride. This acts both as an inducement for motorists to change to mass transit and also allowing an expensive but certain way to get places when motorists are running late.
This could be an answer for congestion reduction in the Leeward Corridor.
Cliff Slater is a regular columnist whose footnoted columns are at www.lava.net/cslater.
