Tag: tolling

convert HOV lanes to Express Lanes

Dan Allison1 Comment

With the establishment of the regional tolling authority, Capitol Area Regional Tolling Authority (CARTA), a joint powers authority (JPA), the opportunity exists for existing HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes to tolled lanes, specifically Express Lanes. HOV lanes had their time, but that time is past. HOV lanes are routinely violated. If you stand on an overpass and look down at vehicles in the HOV lane, you will see that many of them are single occupant vehicles, not high occupancy. You could also do the same while driving, but I’d rather you kept your eye on the road. The HOV 2+, used in the Sacramento region, which requires two occupants, is a pretty low bar, but even that is not achieved by many drivers. HOV lanes, being free, also generate no funds to maintain the lanes.

The SACOG region current has about 144 lane-miles of HOV lanes. It has no HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes, and no Express Lanes (all vehicles tolled, though toll may vary with occupancy or time of day). The map below (pdf) shows the existing HOV lanes (blue), and the HOV lane now being constructed as part of the Fix50 project. I have seen a SACOG map of the intended Managed Lane Network, but am unable to find it at the moment.

While the Yolo 80 project initiated the current tolling effort, SACOG in the 2020 MTP/SCS, identified managed lanes as a key component of both managing traffic and paying for maintenance of the system.

The MTP/SCS identifies these policies directly related to tolling:

  • POLICY 11: Initiate a leadership role in testing and piloting roadway pricing mechanisms, such as facility-based tolling and mileage-based fees, in partnership with the state, federal, and local agencies and private sector organizations.
  • POLICY 12: Take steps to implement tolling or pricing of specific lanes on major facilities, such as freeways, to improve traffic management, reliability, and operations of those facilities and to help raise funding for the cost of building and maintaining large capital investments.
  • POLICY 13: All new major expansion projects on the region’s freeways and expressways should be planned for eventual deployment of pricing options to both manage demand and provide a financing mechanism for capital costs. Any pricing strategy pursued should be sensitive to changes in roadway demand during different parts of the day (peak/off-peak) with the objective of managing demand and providing travel choice.
  • POLICY 14: Revenues generated from facility-based pricing should be used to build and maintain a regional network of paid express lanes and, where surplus revenue is available, on strategic transit services (e.g., express buses) or other mobility solutions that can reduce vehicle miles traveled and provide multiple travel options along priced corridors.

SACOG also has Managed Lane Network webpage, which includes Frequently Asked Questions.

I propose that all HOV lanes in the Sacramento region be converted to Express Lanes within a five year period, and that tolling be managed by CARTA. The reason for five years is that it will take about that long to do the public hearings required by law, to purchase and install the tolling infrastructure, and to determine the amount of tolls and any discounts offered for occupancy or time of day.

There are now so may types of vehicles that might lay claim to discounts that it would be better to charge the same for every vehicle. The road mileage charge, which is being considered by the state, could vary by type of vehicle, particularly to charge by weight which directly corresponds to wear and tear on the roadway, as well as the amount of tire and brake dust generated.

Converting HOV lanes to Express Lanes is the first step. The second step is to convert any lanes in excess of two per direction to Express Lanes (the basic two would remain free, for a period of time), and eventually to toll all lanes on all freeways and bridges. Freeways and bridges are incredibly expensive infrastructure to build and maintain, and users of the freeways and bridges should be paying for this, not the general taxpayer, many of whom never drive (though they do derive some benefit from freight traffic).

For additional posts on managed lanes, see category ‘managed lanes‘.

tolling authority at SacTA

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

At the Sacramento Transportation Authority (SacTA) board meeting today, SACOG gave a presentation on the tolling authority and governance, as part of agenda 9, Receive Information on the creation of the Capital Area Regional Tolling Authority (CARTA) and the Yolo 80 Managed Lane Project and provide direction as appropriate. The two presentations, one by SACOG staff and the other by Executive Director Kevin Bewsey on possible SacTA role, are available: SACOG, SacTA role. SACOG estimated in the current MTP/SCS (not the update being worked on) that about 70% of the expected tolled lanes will be in Sacramento County. See map at bottom.

In my public comment, I spoke on these points, similar to the points I’d also made at the SACOG Transportation Committee meeting:

  • Support creation of regional tolling JPA
  • Support governance options with one Caltrans voting member, but not two
  • Support inclusion of Sacramento Transportation Authority as the Sac county agency
  • Tolling advances user pays concept, which transportation advocates support
  • If the JPA had been in place, Fix50 project would have had toll lanes rather than HOV: HOV lanes don’t work for management because they are routinely violated
  • Support does not indicate that I support adding lanes in Yolo, but if lanes are added, they should be tolled
  • Questions about JPA membership, board members and voting are probably best answered by proportional representation based on tolled lane miles rather than county representation, which is more consistent with citizen representation; this would also entice counties to add or convert tolled lanes so they could be part of the process and benefits
  • Conversion of HOV lanes and general purpose lanes to tolled lanes will be required in the future to maintain our very expensive highway system, so this is a start

Brian Abbanat of YoloTD also spoke.

Several board members spoke, and to summarize and paraphrase their comments:

  • Rich Desmond and Eric Guerra supported a lanes miles voting idea
  • Karina Talamantes expressed concern but seemed satisfied by the answers
  • Bret Daniels expressed the standard ‘I don’t want to pay anything’ and tolling is for rich Tesla people
  • Phil Serna asked about safety of adjacent lanes, SACOG responded that safety can be part of the infrastructure and/or tolling design; I don’t think the idea of separation on the causeway has come up before; also asked about detection and enforcement
  • Eric Guerra said benefit or presentation is raising awareness
  • Patrick Hume actually said that eventually we will need to toll not just lanes but entire facilities

Overall, the concerns of the board were mainly that Sacramento County be treated equitably in terms of tolled projects, design of tolls, and distribution of toll revenue; several people also commented that the focus on excess revenue may be premature since it isn’t clear that there will be excess revenue, and some of it is already dedicated to mitigation measures.

Kevin Bewsey presented on SacTA’s role in the JPA, including how votes would be handled.

Though no motion was made on the issue, nor any vote taken, the consensus of the board seems to be:

  • Support for creation of the JPA
  • Support for creating tolled lanes in Sacramento County
  • Yes to SacTA being the agency for Sacramento County
  • Yes to appointing members of the SacTA board to the JPA board, probably with one county representative and one city representative (under the staff recommended governance structure, SACOG would appoint another from its own board, and from Sacramento County or a city within)
  • Concern about the governance model treatment of Sacramento County, and concern about a voting methodology that is equitable for Sacramento County, but willingness to allow some uncertainty here for the time being (the voting document created by SACOG was not presented, but was discussed since several SacTA board members are also SACOG board members)
map of potential tolled lanes in the SACOG region
map of potential tolled lanes in the SACOG region

Note: I am unsure of the source of this map. It was referred to as being in the 2020 SCS, but I don’t find it there. Apologies for the low resolution, it was extracted from the SACOG presentation today, not from an original source.

For additional posts on managed lanes in general, this regional tolling authority, and the Yolo 80 project, see category ‘managed lanes‘.

Yolo 80 and managed lanes

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

These are my posts on Yolo 80 Managed Lanes Project, or related and relevant. The category ‘managed lanes‘ will surface most of these posts, and future ones if there are any. My main purpose is to inform the public so we will be better informed for the next project (and there will be a next project). The only thing that might stop the Yolo 80 project is a lawsuit or lack of funds. Public opinion will not stop it.

I now will get back to other issues that I’ve been neglecting while focused on Yolo 80 and managed lanes.

all-lanes tolling (freeways are not free)

Dan Allison2 Comments

All-lanes tolling means that all lanes of a freeway or bridge are tolled, or priced. Freeways and bridges are incredibly expensive to build and maintain, even if they are not way over budget as most bridges and many freeways are. Gas tax or road charge (road charge) will never be enough to pay for these infrastructure projects and maintenance. Therefore, more than half of the cost is shifted onto taxpayers who use less of these facilities, or don’t use them at all. In the future, either more and more taxpayer funds will go to keeping these facilities in state of good repair, or they will deteriorate, which is already happening in many places. The solution is to have the users of such facilities pay the full price of such facilities.

Caltrans approach to transportation is to continually build more and to under-maintain what they already have. Anyone who says the era of big, expensive bridge and freeway projects is at an end doesn’t know Caltrans. Caltrans is like the heroin addict who needs ‘just one more hit, and then I’ll quit’. The only solution is to have Caltrans go ‘cold turkey’, ceasing all freeway expansions and focusing on maintenance. Of course most Caltrans engineers would be suddenly superfluous, and that it the real issue, that freeway and bridge building is just an employment program for engineers, having little to do with meeting the needs of the traveling public.

MTC (Metropolitan Transportation Commission) is the Municipal Planning Organization, MPO, for the nine county Bay Area, similar to SACOG in the Sacramento region. MTC is considering all-lane tolling in a study to determine how to fund maintenance of freeways. I encourage you to view the MTC presentation at the SPUR Digital Discourse in January 2023 (https://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/NGFS_SPUR_Jan2023.pdf). The best summary page is below. Keep in mind that this is a long term study, and solutions might not be implemented before 2035. Nevertheless, the Sacramento region could learn a lot from the study, and even implement some ideas before 2035. Other MTC pages and documents of interest: Express Lanes START, Next Generation Bay Area Freeways Study, Bay Area Express Lanes, and Open Road Tolling. Yes, Sacramento is not the bay area, but anyone who claims we can’t learn from each other is stupid.

Most Bay Area bridges are already all-lane tolled, via the Bay Area Tolling Authority and the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District. So the issue for the Bay Area is the freeways, some of which currently have HOV, HOT, or Express lane tolling on one lane, but many freeways do not have tolling at all.

MTC graphic for Pricing Strategies
MTC graphic for Pricing Strategies

Note that it says ‘in Transit-Rich Corridors’ for two of the options. Sacramento currently has three corridors that might be considered transit-rich: Capitol Corridor between Sacramento and the Bay Area (if frequency were improved), light rail to Watt/I-80 for I-80 (if access and connections were improved), and light rail to Folsom for Hwy 50 (if access and connections were improved, and after 15-minute service to Folsom is implemented). I-5 does not have an alternate transit corridor. None of these are comparable to transit-rich corridors in the bay area provided by BART, Caltrain, Capitol Corridor, and several high frequency and BRT-ish bus services. To achieve this level of transit-rich in the Sacramento region will require funds beyond that which might be available from a new sales tax measure (which has been delayed until 2026, or beyond). I believe that tolling/pricing is the only practical source of funds that will allow our region to develop transit rich corridors parallel to our freeways, and beyond, as well as maintaining what we have. Note: I can’t find an official definition of high frequency rail, so I’m going to say 30 minutes during peak times and 60 minutes at all other times. Capitol Corridor and San Joaquins do not achieve this yet.

I believe that all-lane tolling is the best ultimate solution. Freeways should not be free. The illusion that they are free to use is the same that biases motor vehicle drivers over all other modes and users. The money is coming from somewhere, so the question is, is it coming from the users of the freeways, or from everyone? For individuals, paying for what they use would cause them to use less, and shift travel to other modes. Yes, people would still drive, but less than they do now. For freight, paying true costs would no doubt increase the price of goods transported by truck. Truck freight traffic is highly subsidized, most prominently by not making trucks pay their share of road damage. Rail freight is not directly subsidized, though in a sense accepting the diesel pollution, disruption of travel across rail corridors, and dominance over passenger rail are indirect subsidies.

Below is a map of the SACOG region showing freeways, rail, and high frequency transit (light rail and bus). If you squint hard, you may be able to pick out the transit. So the following map shows the area focused on Davis to Folsom. These are sketch maps meant to give a general idea, so pdfs are not provided, and I intend to update and refine the maps.

map of freeways, rail and high frequency transit
map of freeways, rail and high frequency transit
map of freeways, rail and high frequency transit, focused on Davis to Folsom
map of freeways, rail and high frequency transit, focused on Davis to Folsom