Check out all the cities around the country using HOT lanes — high occupancy toll — to help manage and relieve traffic congestion.
There is just no question about it — congestion pricing is the wave of the future. Charlotte? No thanks, we’ll stick to the wave of past. Trains.
More from the WSJ:
The routes most frequently adapted for special toll lanes usually carry 100,000 to 250,000 vehicles a day. While only a small percentage of drivers use the HOT lanes, those cars leave more capacity for cars in regular lanes.
In Minnesota, tolls increase when traffic in the express lanes is moving slower than 50 mph. Drivers pay whatever is shown on the overhead sign just before they enter the lane, even if the price climbs after that. Solo drivers who use HOT lanes without paying — by driving in the lane without an electronic tag in their car — can be fined $142 or more.
Linda Koblick, a Hennepin County, Minn., commissioner who helped state transportation officials develop the I-394 project, worried at first that express lanes would cater mostly to drivers “paying an extra $5 just to get there faster, because they have the money and they can,” she says. Her mind was changed after a visit to Southern California, where she saw “housewives in minivans having to pick their kids up from day care.”
Barb Green, an accounts-payable employee for a food concession at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, has paid as much as $6 to use the express lane when traffic was particularly brutal. Paying extra is worth it, she says, getting her home sooner to her disabled husband. She’s also discovered another benefit: she burns about a quarter of a tank of gas a week, down from a half-tank in the slower-moving regular lanes.
100,000 to 250,000 vehicles a day. Recall that we are set to spend $358 million for a North line commuter rail that will carry all of 4600 riders a day in far off 2030, according to CATS itself.
Good plan, Charlotte. Good plan.
