Bus Rapid Transit and Toll Managed Lanes proposed to combat Washington DC congestion

COST Commentary: With no comment on the details of the specific plan in the article below, the plan’s concept of “managed,” variably priced lanes offers a cost effective solution to increasing traffic congestion in many cities. These managed lanes offer maximum utilization and reduced congestion of roadway assets by providing: 1) user incentives for more effective timing of many trips which are not time critical, 2) by improving reliability of time critical trips, 3) by providing bus transit with significantly improved travel times, 4) by encouraging car pooling and 5) by improving emergency vehicle response times.

Managed lanes have demonstrated effectiveness in several implementations in states including California, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Ney York, Oregon, Florida and Texas. Studies have confirmed the cost effectiveness and numerous implementations are being planned.

Managed lanes can be implemented for a fraction of the costs of train transit and are far more effective in improving mobility for the vast majority of travelers, both private and public transit. While train transit requires massive subsidies to be paid by all taxpayers, managed lanes are primarily paid for by users.

Managed lanes are very cost effective and could dramatically improve mobility in the Austin region for hundreds of thousands of daily travelers.

Following this Washington Examiner Reporter’s story is an Examiner Editorial chastizing Washington, DC’s ‘National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board’ (TPB) for being at least 10 years late in “discovering” HOT or managed lanes.

Transportation officials mull massive new toll system

By: Markham Heid
Examiner Staff Writer
September 10, 2010

Area transportation officials are developing a plan to combat the Washington region’s mounting traffic congestion and funding shortfalls with a mammoth new system of toll roads spreading across almost every major local roadway.

The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board, an organization of dozens of local, state and federal transportation officials and elected leaders, is set to meet Wednesday to discuss a years-in-the-making plan that could guide major changes and additions to the area’s road network for the next 20 years.

“Congestion is a major threat to the economic vitality of the region and the quality of life its residents enjoy,” says a report outlining the toll road plan developed by the planning board and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

The plan would create a 1,650-mile network of “variably priced” lanes on the Capital Beltway, Interstates 295, 395 and 66, the George Washington Parkway and other thoroughfares.

If the plan goes forward, drivers using interstates and highways anywhere around Washington would have to pay, with rates varying depending on the location and time of day. The plan does not suggest actual toll rates.

The pay-to-drive system would provide a new revenue stream for area transportation agencies, and would reduce traffic, according to the planning board’s studies. And, if the network is widespread, usage prices could be kept low.

The new tolls would mimic the collection systems being installed on the Intercounty Connector toll road, linking I-270 and I-95, and high-occupancy toll lanes on the Beltway.

The plan also includes a 500-mile rapid transit bus system, which would share the new toll roads.

The planning board’s vision for a vast network of revenue-generating highways is still far from approved, but local transportation officials say action must be taken to ease traffic congestion and improve the quality of area roads.

“There’s a fundamental problem with the usage of roads, and that is they’re offered as a free good. And if you have a free good you have a shortage,” said Chris Zimmerman, a member of the Transportation Planning Board who also headed a task force to examine the workability of widespread tolling.

Zimmerman said a widespread toll system could be the solution to the area’s congestion problems. But he wasn’t sure if there could ever be enough public and political backing to push the plan forward.

“How bad do things have to get for people to be willing to reach for new solutions? I don’t know,” Zimmerman said.

mheid@washingtonexaminer.com

Examiner Local Editorial: Transportation board discovers HOT lanes, a decade lateExaminer Editorial
September 13, 2010

Where has the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB) been for the last 10 years? The TPB is only now considering a plan to create a 1,650-mile network of “variably priced” toll lanes to reduce traffic congestion on the Washington region’s clogged highway system and raise revenue for future transportation improvements. The plans reportedly include a 500-mile bus rapid transit system — but only after Virginia taxpayers were handed a $5 billion-plus bill for the Dulles Metro Rail.
As the officially designated Metropolitan Planning Organization whose mission is to establish a “continuing, comprehensive and coordinated” transportation plan for the Washington region, TPB should have been looking at HOT lanes a decade ago when it became clear to everybody else that traffic had become one of the region’s chief problems. Yet nine years after the September 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon, Washington’s official evacuation routes “are the same inadequate corridors that routinely fail on the average weekday,” the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance noted. “Today, no sense of urgency to link regional security to strategic transportation chokepoint improvements exists at any level of government.”

The TPB not only has failed to plan adequately for future traffic and potential disasters, it has itself become another choke point in the system. No wonder, when TPB member Chris Zimmerman is picked to head TPB’s HOT lanes task force even though he, and the Arlington County Board on which he also sits, have an obvious bias against them. Virginia is currently adding 14 miles of HOT lanes to the Capital Beltway, and the four extra lanes will be free for carpools and buses. Yet when the Arlington Board filed a lawsuit to block a similar project on Interstate 95/395, Zimmerman told The Examiner: “The result [of building HOT lanes] will be more cars on everybody’s streets, slower moving traffic and more air pollution.” Wrong, wrong and wrong. The only way someone so clueless about HOT lanes winds up chairing TPB’s HOT lanes task force is politics, not sound policy.

It is no coincidence that Arlington officials also used federal homeland security funds for a program to help pets survive a major disaster. These same officials have for years blocked efforts to expand the chronically congested Interstate 66. Unfortunately, such thinking is all too common on the TPB, which is why its “planning” process is at least a decade behind the real world.

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