Traffic
Edited by Sara Epstein
(The idea of charging fees to travel on LA and California freeways has been suggested as a way of providing some relief for both the City and State budget woes.
There are differing views on whether the proposal will work, whether it is a double tax and whether it is the right thing to do. Here are two sides in that debate. The first offers the views of Roger Snoble and Doug Failing … the heads of Metro and Caltrans respectively … from an op-ed article in the LA Times and the second is an opinion piece from the Daily News.)
Highway toll lanes: the way to go
They're proven congestion busters, not an experiment.
By Roger Snoble and Doug Failing
Quicker than you can drive from downtown to El Monte, pundits launched their attacks on the trial plan to convert carpool lanes into toll lanes. The freeways no longer will be "free," they say, and only the rich will use these "Lexus lanes."
First, the freeways aren't free. L.A. County commuters waste, on average, 72 hours a year stuck in traffic, which translates into more than $1,000 in excess fuel costs and lost productivity. And congestion will get worse as our population grows. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority projects that by 2030, average freeway speeds will drop 40% if we do nothing.
It may seem counterintuitive, but making this change will squeeze a lot more capacity out of our congested freeways -- and will benefit drivers of all classes.
Building new freeways, or even expanding existing ones, is extremely difficult. The region is so built up, and the environmental and funding hurdles so onerous, it would be decades before any construction was complete. That's why Metro and Caltrans sought a federal grant to test congestion-reduction pricing on the San Bernardino Freeway between downtown and El Monte and the Foothill Freeway from Duarte to Pasadena, and on the transit way in the center of the Harbor Freeway if there's funding left over. The demonstration project could be in place by the end of 2010.
Carpool lanes on these freeways would be converted into toll lanes where optimum speeds of 45 to 50 mph would be guaranteed by variable pricing. Although our tolls haven't been set, in other U.S. cities they have ranged from 50 cents to $10 a trip. However, freeway express buses and vanpools would not be charged a toll, and Metro and Caltrans are also considering giving regular public transit users toll lane credits to use on those occasions when they have to drive.
Moreover, drivers would be charged less during off-peak hours than at rush hours, with the expectation that many people will then change their commuting behavior to take advantage of lower rates or beefed-up ride-share programs. Vehicles in the general-purpose lanes would pay nothing.
If we can lure drivers to public transit and better regulate the flow of traffic, all of our freeway lanes will work a lot more efficiently than they do today. In many cases, carpoolers are slogging along at the same snail's pace as solo drivers in the next lane.
This isn't some untested notion. Congestion pricing has worked successfully in San Diego and Orange counties, Houston, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and cities around the world. On Interstate 15 in San Diego County, where eight miles of carpool lanes were converted, commuters now save an average of 20 minutes using the new toll lanes. Express bus service in the lanes attracted an additional 400,000 new passenger boardings annually. In Salt Lake City, the converted lanes are handling 46% more vehicles than before and still maintaining speeds of 45 mph or better. Higher and more stable speeds are the norm now in toll and regular lanes.
That's why local and state officials welcomed Washington's offer of $213.6 million to try it out here. Our trial run will include deploying at least 60 new high-capacity express buses, beefing up Metrolink and Metro Gold Line service and offering more vanpools in these freeway corridors. With gas prices projected to top $5 a gallon in 2009, even die-hard car lovers might start taking the express buses or other ride sharing.
The success of the Metro Orange Line, Metro Rapid and express buses and Metro Rail are proof positive that commuters will take public transit if it saves them time and money. These new freeway express buses on the San Bernardino and Foothill freeways would be competitive from the get-go. Moreover, the toll money would be plowed back into the freeway corridors to add more buses, vanpools, rail service and park-and-ride lots.
Studies in cities that have freeway toll lanes show that people of all income levels use them. For example, in Minneapolis, 55% of the city's low-income residents report using toll lanes on occasion. About 40% of all travelers in those lanes are riding in new freeway express buses, and many of those riders are low and middle income.
Change is hard to accept, but, like it or not, Los Angeles County is changing. Every day there are more people, more jobs and more traffic. We've reached a tipping point. We have to try new approaches for handling that traffic, and toll lanes are worth testing to better manage our freeways for the benefit of all.
Roger Snoble is Metro's chief executive. Doug Failing is director of the Caltrans office overseeing Los Angeles and Ventura counties. (This Op-Ed article first published in the LA Times on May 3. www.latimes.com.)
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HOV lane conversion plan is a taxpayer rip-off
Proving that "bipartisan" is not always synonymous with "common sense," the Bush administration, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are lining up behind a plan that would make Angelenos pay for the same roads twice.
That's right: Even though your tax dollars paid to build the Southland's freeways, our leaders in Washington, Sacramento and City Hall think you should pay for the privilege of using them.
Last week, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters joined Schwarzenegger and Villaraigosa in backing plans to convert some 85 miles of the HOV lanes from the I-10, the Foothill and the Harbor freeways into toll lanes. Drivers would pay a premium - perhaps as much as $10 each way at peak times - to drive in these first-class lanes, whizzing past the poor schlubs stuck in coach.
In theory, the plan would move traffic more quickly, at least for those who can afford to spend as much as an extra $100 a week on their commute. That's because the toll lane would guarantee faster speeds by bumping less affluent drivers into the remaining lanes.
In other words, faster commutes for the rich, more congestion for the rest of us.
State and local leaders like this idea because it comes with cash - a $213.6 million federal grant that would include funds for Park and Ride lots and 60 new buses. But as much as California and L.A. could use the money, this is a case in which the benefit isn't worth the cost.
In the short term, converting the lanes and erecting tollbooths would wreak havoc on traffic. And in the long term, tollbooths would create bottlenecks in places where congestion is already bad enough.
It need not be like this. In other parts of California, such as Orange County and San Diego, toll lanes have helped to relieve traffic congestion, and they could in L.A., too.
But there's a key difference between toll roads that work and the impractical ones now being proposed.
Typically, toll lanes are new roads. They provide additional traffic capacity to an existing freeway or route, and are paid for by the very people who most benefit by using them. For that matter, even those who don't use them also benefit, because traffic on the old freeway lanes is reduced when wealthier motorists switch over to the toll road.
But the toll roads being pushed by the Bush, Schwarzenegger and Villaraigosa administrations are exactly the opposite. They amount to double taxation by charging taxpayers a second time to use taxpayer-built freeways, while neither expanding capacity nor reducing congestion for the vast majority of motorists.
And while it's true that some of California's HOV lanes - including the ones targeted for conversion - are underutilized, there are better ways to put them to more efficient use than to start socking commuters with tolls.
For one, the state could eliminate these lanes' HOV status, and make them open to all.
Or, it could create a different sort of "toll" for solo motorists who are willing to pay extra to drive in the HOV lane. These drivers could purchase a special sticker, like the one hybrid drivers can put on their cars, that lets them drive in car-pool lanes.
Both those solutions would get more cars in the car-pool lanes - and out of the general traffic flow - without imposing a cost on anyone, save for a voluntary one paid by the top beneficiaries. And neither would create the logistical nightmare that comes with building and maintaining tollbooths.
Of course, these plans wouldn't generate a lucrative stream of government revenues the way tolls would. That's probably why they're not under consideration.
Charging taxpayers twice for the same benefit is an easy way to ramp up government's cash intake. But it's also a rip-off, and one that does very little to cure L.A.'s profound traffic problems.
(Editorial first published in the Daily News on May 6. www.dailynews.com .) _
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