Can Congestion Pricing Relieve Rush Hour Traffic Jams?

[urbanlibertarian]

This is from a new article from everyone's favorite transportation writer (just kidding) Robert Poole:

Even with this new technology, I could not imagine tradition-bound state transportation agencies using it to charge market prices on freeways. Yet for several decades, high-quality toll roads had already been financed, built, and operated by investor-owned companies in France, Italy, and Spain. The governments there would grant a company a long-term franchise, similar to those used for investor-owned electric utilities in the United States. Based on the franchise (called a “concession”), winning bidders could raise the capital to build the toll road, repaying their investors from toll revenues. So my proposal, in a 1988 policy paper published by the Reason Foundation, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that publishes this magazine, was to invite the private sector to finance, build, and operate market-priced lanes on Southern California’s congested freeways.

That paper soon came to the attention of Gov. George Deukmejian and California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) Director Bob Best, and in 1989 they secured passage of legislation to permit up to four pilot projects based on the idea. The first project to be developed was the 91 Express Lanes, four new variably priced lanes in the wide median on 10 miles of the highly congested SR 91 freeway in Orange County. The lanes, built for just $130 million in 1995 dollars, opened to traffic in December 1995, allowing commuters who had purchased transponders to decide whether higher speed was worth the congestion-sensitive price listed at the entrance of the passage.

Although derided by skeptics, the tollway proved hugely popular. The demand for improved mobility was high enough that the Express Lanes have fully covered construction costs (via annual debt service payments on long-term toll revenue bonds) as well as all ongoing operation and maintenance expenses.

The 91 experiment demonstrated four important things. First, the long-term toll concession model from Europe is transferable to the United States. Second, many people are willing to pay for faster and more reliable rush-hour trips in highly congested freeway corridors. Third, transponder technology is a practical way of implementing congestion pricing. Fourth, variable, demand-based pricing is effective in keeping priced lanes flowing freely at the speed limit, even during the busiest rush-hour periods.

Whole article here: http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/21/fixing-americas-freeways

[fsujax]

coming soon to an interstate near you!

[mtraininjax]

Forget that coming to an interstate near you, it is already in Atlanta along I-85, they call them HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes and you get charged based on the travel time it takes between segments. A few weeks ago, the cost was $4.75 and the lanes are  priced to move at a speed of at least 45 miles per hour. Costs depend on the time of the day and number of cars in the lanes.  Some reports from January show the lanes already at the peak they were designed to carry.

The HOT lanes are also in use in Virginia and Texas. Probably coming at some point to parts of I-95 in South Florida, when they finish the construction on 95 from West Palm down to Miami.

[cline]

Probably coming at some point to parts of I-95 in South Florida, when they finish the construction on 95 from West Palm down to Miami.

They are already down there...http://www.95express.com/

Wouldn't surprised if they're up here in the near future.

[mtraininjax]

Right you are, now that you mention it, I remember leaving Miami heading North, I jumped over in the 2 left lanes, seperated with the plastic cones and was running well over 80  on a Sunday and the toll was minimal, like 25 cents each section. I have been on that thing headed to a football game at the stadium when there is an accident in one of those left lanes, and it is brutal, cause everyone else is moving on the right and you are stuck in those lanes.

Probably will move them up to West Palm Beach when their construction is completed. I doubt we see them in Jax, without a major road project inside of Duval County, as many of the overpasses are not built for more than the lanes they carry now. They could shrink the lanes down, like they did in Atlanta to 10 foot lanes or smaller, but that would be scary. Re-routing trucks on 295 that are passing through would help too.

I would pay more to get through the Fuller Warren bottleneck every day!

[tufsu1]

and soon the I-95 express lanes will be extended into Broward County....and they are building new lanes for I-595 in Broward that will be variable priced as well