For future trips to the Eastside, we may contact Marty McFly to see if his buddy, Doc Brown, can retro-fit our ‘08 Honda with a “cloak of invisibility.”
If that doesn’t work, we may be forced to settle for the plan concocted by the Washington state Department of Transportation for I-405’s 17 miles of toll lanes between Lynnwood and Bellevue.
This is not a knock against tolls (although a potential top charge of 15 bucks for 17 miles makes our wallet whimper.) A convincing case can be made for replacing gas taxes with user fees, like tolls, to cover our state’s transportation investments. Steadily improving fuel efficiency already is shrinking the revenue derived from each mile driven on our state’s roadways.
But this kind of shift depends greatly on public acceptance.
So it was an understatement last week when Reema Griffith, executive director of the state Transportation Commission, said: “The idea is not to get people riled up and put out something half-baked. We want to be sure what’s put out there is our best effort.”
The new HOT lanes (the name is a mash-up of “High Occupancy” and “Toll”) can be used by drivers whose cars have the kind of transponders that automatically pay tolls on the Highway 520 bridge. The HOT lanes can also be used by drivers without transponders, but they’ll get bills in the mail for greater amounts. Depending on time-of-day and traffic conditions, tolls could climb to $15, but usually will be between 75 cents and $4.
Got it? Oh, but there’s more.
As part of the state’s incentives for us to share rides, carpools can use the HOT lanes for free — but only if the drivers remember to flip a switch on their specially issued “Good to Go” transponders. When they aren’t carpooling, they should diligently flip the switch off and pay tolls like everyone else.
But what counts as a carpool? At busy times it’s three people per vehicle, but sometimes it’s just two people. And if you find yourself traveling on Highway 167 further south, the rules and the costs will be somewhat different.
Phew. If this is meant as a balm for gridlock-weary commuters, there’s a flaw in the ointment.
Nobody loves paying a gas tax, but at least it is simple. It is rolled into the price of each gallon we pump. If the state is serious about the future of tolling, it needs to find streamlined solutions.
In other words, a lot more Steve Jobs and a lot less Rube Goldberg.
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