Orphan Road

I thought it was a little harsh for state troopers to be pulling people over on day one of the SR 167 HOT lane program, but reading this report from Susan Gilmore at the Times puts it in proper context:

On Monday, 90 cars were stopped for lane violations, said Washington State Trooper Curt Boyle. He said 60 stops were for solo drivers in the car-pool lanes and all were cited, facing a $124 fine. He said 30 were stopped for crossing a double white line and about 60 percent of them were cited at trooper discretion. That also carries a $124 fine.

In other words, the majority of people who were ticketed were people who were doing something (driving solo in the HOV lane) that's never been legal.

Also worthy of note: people stopped using it when the toll got above $2.

Larry Lange has been providing tons of live updates on how the new HOT lanes are working on SR 167 this morning. The toll seems to have peaked at $2.25, far less than the $9 or so that was being bandied about as a worst case scenario.

KUOW this morning said that drivers were being ticketed for violations, which surprises me a bit. You'd think there would be a grace period to educate commuters (who obviously don't all obsessively read transpo blogs). But maybe the media got that wrong.

I found myself on SR 167 last week and I saw the HOT lane equipment being installed. I'm pretty curious to see how this project works out. It's pretty hard to jump into the HOV lane as a single passenger, but it's pretty easy to do it when it's an HOT lane. Who's to say you didn't pay to get in?

Cascadia Report offers a fix for getting traffic moving on SR520 now:

So here's an idea: Immediately move 520's westbound HOV lane to the left side from Redmond to Seattle. Instead of being stopped by merging traffic in the right-hand lane, buses and three-person carpools could speed through the corridor. Forcing cars with one passenger to merge from two lanes into one before crossing the bridge would be a dramatic incentive to take transit or carpool.

The change could be made almost overnight and would boost capacity. Demand for buses would soar and suddenly people would be willing to carpool, even if it meant sharing rides with (gasp!) strangers. If drivers really wanted more lanes they would be incented to support funding a new bridge.

It's certainly an idea I've had myself from time to time, as I sat in traffic on the bus from Redmond to Seattle (I used to work out there). I can certainly sympathize with CR's daunting tale of a nightmarish afternoon commute on the bus. So long as the Westbound traffic on 520 doesn't back up past the 405 interchange, you're usually okay. But if it does... ho boy, things can get gnarly pretty quick.

Unfortunately, CR's idea to shift the HOV lane from the right-hand side to the left (thereby preventing buses from getting stuck in the 405 snarl) won't work, from what I understand. It turns out that the HOV lane on 520 is an afterthought. It was a shoulder lane that WSDOT converted to an HOV lane after the fact. As such, it's not safe enough for general-purpose traffic. (This is also why it has a 3-person HOV requirement.)

Here's a 2002 report on the subject from WSDOT:

These shoulder HOV lanes can safely accommodate three-person HOV traffic flow, but not general traffic flow.

When the 6-lane bridge is eventually put in place, then it definitely makes sense to re-engineer 520 to allow general traffic in the right two lanes and HOV traffic in the far left lane. But that would require some major construction.

However, in the interest of being solutions-oriented, let me offer one of my own. The idea is simple: we could instantly reduce the traffic from Redmond to Seattle in the afternoon if we gave people an incentive to do a 2-person carpool. As it stands now, 2-person carpools get stuck in the general traffic along with solo drivers, so you might as well drive solo.

Since we don't have the lanes to work with, we need other incentives. One option would be to pay people who do a 2-person car pool. How do you pay them? I'm not sure. Maybe they stop for some kind of coupon when they get to Montlake, or maybe we photograph all the cars and then send a check to everyone (by matching license plates) whom we can verify has a passenger.

The other option is good, old-fashioned public shame. Maybe make up bumper stickers or road signs that say "I'm doing my part to make this commute better... have you found a 2-person carpool?" I'm skeptical about such a solution, but since the majority of commuters coming back from the East side work for a few large employers, the community is tightly knit enough that social pressure just might work.

At the very least, we could make it easier for slugging to occur. I've been waiting at the bus stop on NE 148th in Bellevue several times and had a driver pull up and offer to take two people across the bridge to Montlake. Whether that reduces traffic or just makes for emptier buses crossing the bridge, I'm not sure.

HOT lanes (a.k.a. "Lexus Lanes") have two main purposes, as far as I can tell: (1) to make better use of HOV lanes by adding as many single-occumancy cars as you can while still keeping those lanes moving at 50mph, and (2) to free up general purpose lanes. I suppose you could add a third purpose, to generate additional revenue. But overall revenue is small, and typically covers only the cost of administering the program.

As this Wall Street Journal article notes, the lanes are successful at the first goal. But they will only benefit the general public to the extent that they achieve the second. And on that point, the record is less clear. Does any extra capacity just get eaten up by people who would have otherwise chosen not to commute? Do wealthy drivers just take more trips now that they have a guaranteed congestion-free option? These questions remain unanswered.

To truly manage congestion in this way, you'd probably have to toll all the lanes, which is the system that King County is supposedly looking into.