With only a couple of days under our seat belts for the new High-Occupancy Toll lanes on I-405, it may be a little soon to judge the lanes’ effects on traffic.
The reviews from drivers on Monday were mixed, according to Street Smarts columnist Melissa Slager, and depended largely on whether you were in the HOT lanes as a carpooler or toll payer or in the interstate’s other lanes, with the “normals,” as one driver put it.
The state Department of Transportation said it expects some slowdowns and confusion as drivers adjust to the new lanes and their rules, such as whether you can cross the double-white lines that separate the HOT lanes from the regular lanes. Hint: You can’t, unless you want to pay a $136 fine.
Previously, we’ve criticized what seems an overly complicated process for using the lanes for those in carpools or those willing to pay the toll. It involves obtaining a Good To Go Flex Pass transponder and maintaining an online account from which tolls will be deducted. Carpool drivers can flip a switch on the transponders and avoid paying the toll. If you’re not using a transponder you can still use the toll lanes, but cameras will snap a picture of your license plate and you’ll be sent a bill for the toll, plus an additional $2 fee.
Simple, right?
There’s much more but not enough space to cover it all here. Even the state transportation folks need several website pages to explain it all.
So why complicate something like the carpool lanes, which were intended to encourage folks to buddy up on the drive to work and home?
Blame the steady creep in travel times in the carpool lane, which can be as long as 70 minutes for the 17 miles between Lynnwood and Bellevue. The Department of Transportation hopes requiring three-person car pools during peak travel times will keep the traffic flowing at 45 miles per hour for carpools, buses and those willing to pay the toll. Adding an option to pay a toll between 75 cents and $10 depending on traffic loads will also provide a new revenue stream for the state. Money raised by the tolls is earmarked for I-405 improvements.
Whether the Flex Pass will accomplish that goal remains to be seen, but those transponders may offer a solution to the state’s problem in paying for its transportation infrastructure.
In the 20-year plan the state Transportation Commission released last year it noted the increasing difficulty in paying for maintenance, operation and new construction. While the Legislature passed a gas tax increase this year, vehicles’ fuel efficiency will continue to improve, making the gas tax less effective in generating the revenue the state’s transportation system needs. Among its recommendations, the commission called on the state to consider options to transition from a gas tax to a road usage charge.
The options for a usage charge include a flat fee, recording odometer readings or using a GPS device to track a vehicle’s mileage. As much as people dislike the gas tax, many have an even bigger problem with a GPS device that could record where they go, even if it’s just to work, school, stores, home and other typical destinations.
But if deployed strategically, the equipment that works in tandem with the transponders could be placed at offramps, onramps and interchanges to preserve some privacy by recording mileage only on state highways and interstates, ignoring where drivers travel on city streets and county roads.
Coupled with a significant reduction in the gas tax, turning state highways and the interstates into toll roads by using the transponders could offer a fair and effective way to pay for how we get around.
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