My friend is in Highway Patrol. He absolutely hates these lanes because they are impossible to enforce for this very reason. There are a ton of rules and exemptions and he has to try and verify that the number on the sign matches the number of people in the car in a split second.
He basically admitted to me that it's based on the honor system, he has no real way to enforce that the number is correct unless it's a convertible with the top down.
> Southern California has it too, but they call it "the" 101
I moved here 26 years ago but I still call it "the 101" (but I call all the other freeways by just their number, except the 5 because we have that in SoCal too). So yeah, I guess you can use it to detect I learned to drive in LA, but I've lived more than 1/2 my life here, so if I'm an invader, I'm definitely playing the long con!
And then if your friend makes that call, he has to conduct a traffic stop. On the freeway!
So in the interest of penalizing someone who committed no safety infraction, only a financial one, we create a dangerous situation for everyone on the freeway, including the officer.
> In 1998, California Highway Patrol officer Scott Greenly was struck by a car and killed while issuing a ticket on the shoulder of Route 85; thereafter the portion between Quito Road and Prospect Road in the City of Saratoga was named the CHP Officer Scott M. Greenly Memorial Freeway.
Regarding "the 101", I always wondered why it's "101" here and "the 101" in SoCal. According to an article I read, it's because the original Los Angeles area freeways didn't have numbers, just names: the Pasadena Freeway, the Ventura Freeway, etc. It only made sense to use "the". When they got numbers later, the habit of using "the" stuck around.
In the Bay Area, the freeways got numbers first. They do have names too (like the stretch of 85 mentioned above), but mostly no one uses their names or even know them. So there never was a habit of using "the" with the number.
I was always told by people outside of LA that the reason was because in LA the freeways are so important they're revered like religious idols so they get the definite article. But my parents grew up through the transition you describe and back up what you said, that they all had names before numbers.
I was a kid in the early 80s and back then all the traffic reports on the radio were still by freeway name, so I learned them all that way too.
The FastTrak lanes operated by Los Angeles Metro (the 10 and 110) are testing facial recognition cameras that can supposedly do the same job and ticket people automatically. I'm a little skeptical (on top of the privacy implications, there's practical ones: how well will they work when your passenger is reclining in the last row of a van with tinted windows? Or a child in a car seat facing backwards?), but we'll see how the pilot goes over the coming months.
I am not a lawyer of any kind and this is not legal advice. I'm merely speculating based on my past experience with other tickets on how I might handle the hypothetical scenario being discussed.
It's up to the state to prove their case. I'd contest any such ticket with the truth. Likely these systems are profitable because people don't generally contest the ticket (or do so in ineffectual ways). Neither the private company nor the state wants any judge making a ruling that makes such tickets impossible to enforce. I'd expect it would get dropped before I'd ever have to talk to a judge, but even if not, unless they have clear evidence I am lying, they're probably going to lose in court.
I am 99.99% sure right before covid I read (and saw them installing something) they were using some kind of heat or thermal reading on the 110. Me being curious I always set my transponder to 2 and turned on my passenger seat warmer on after that. Never got anything in the mail.
Is "being curious" a tongue-in-cheek way to describe breaking the law? "I was just curious whether anyone would notice if I step out of the store without paying"
Yeah they won't be able to see my baby facing backwards in the carseat or my mother in law in the back row of the van. That will really only work for cars with one row of seats.
I feel like a simpler system would be to just charge the same for vehicles using these lanes regardless of occupants. A higher cost will incentivize more occupants anyway. Of course in that system there would be no HOV lane incentive to drive electric vehicles, but so what? They have already been subsidized through tax breaks and we could always incentivize them further by increasing gas taxes. It just seems to me that a system like this is trying to incentivize different things and letting enforcement get to complicated. Just keep it simple and it won't be so bad. I think the point of these lanes should be to improve traffic flow by increasing the number of occupants in the cars. Electric vehicles simply do not achieve that.
That said in a way I don't think this system is too terrible. It's a little funny, but it's at least fairly simple. But it requires enforcement. I've done a lot of driving throughout California recently and it seems like half the people in carpool lanes shouldn't be there. And apparently I'm the last person in the state that doesn't roll across the solid double lanes whenever I feel like it. Never have I seen a cop care about this stuff.
I do not think that would work - the charge for the toll is just not enough to really incentivize carpooling on its own.
I agree some enforcement could improve things but then again I would guess this still increases carpooling just by the fact that most people do not want to worry about breaking the rules.
An interesting enforcement option might be to create a fastrack app or integrate even with Waze / other apps where each person in the car has to confirm they are where they say there are. It wouldnt need to be running a full constant GPS like navigating with turn by turn - just a few GPS pings at the start of your trip to confirm you are all in the same vehicle (or even by a quick local bluetooth ping of each others phones)
> I do not think that would work - the charge for the toll is just not enough to really incentivize carpooling on its own.
I guess if I'm honest I think the whole scheme is a silly way of getting people to share vehicles. Really we should probably just take the carpool lanes and make them exclusively usable by buses during rush hour and actually build out that form of transportation.
If we spent half as much money on better public transit in that corridor as we do adding lanes and building this ridiculous toll system, we might have something functional enough that a lot more people would use it.
Have you ever been on 101? This seems like a really out of touch comment in relation to 101 itself.
Your website says you don’t live in the US and you did your education in NYC - so I feel like you might be really unaware of how this road operates and how many of these others operate…
> Have you ever been on 101? This seems like a really out of touch comment in relation to 101 itself.
> Your website says you don’t live in the US and you did your education in NYC - so I feel like you might be really unaware of how this road operates and how many of these others operate…
I grew up in southern California and did my undergrad in the Bay Area. I've probably put around 100k miles of driving in California with myself behind the wheel and that includes the fact that I have been mostly been living outside California for more than a decade. Last time I drove through the Bay Area was a couple months back and I did in fact drive on the 101.
Then why would you advocate for busses in the land of suburbia knowing that is one of the least efficient forms of transport for suburbia? Busses are great within cities and places that have optimized their topology and layouts for them and for super commutes. They absolutely suck for getting you from random parts of SF to say emerald hills.
Buses in suburban Sweden aren't really that bad. In fact I've been experimenting with using buses in San Diego more and more and the main drawbacks are (1) low volume of buses and (2) buses sitting in traffic in rush hour. The first can be solved by putting more buses on the road and the second can be solved by giving buses priority in traffic. Even with these shortcomings, buses in San Diego seem much worse in many people's imagination than they truly are.
I'm not saying that my beliefs here are right, but I would recommend you consider the possibility that yours are wrong.
Are you going within San Diego itself or outside San Diego? Cause Bay Area is pretty large and people aren't usually commuting 5 miles from their houses or something.
Buses on highways tend to either have horrible bus stations in the median, which are often far from where you want to be and are incredibly noisy and riddled with pollution.
Or they have to go off the highway which requires either very expensive exclusive off-ramps, otherwise they get stuck behind all the other traffic on the highway which defeats the purpose.
I unfortunately think that 101 traffic in the bay area is pretty unsolvable. The main silicon valley area is incredibly low density and virtually unwalkable given the masses of parking lots.
I think the best option is to massively increase density next to Caltrain stations (which is starting to happen) and basically move all the development next to the train, rather than trying to build transit to the existing development.
Maybe new lines could be built on BART etc to make new corridors, paid for by big taxes from existing "sprawl" office developments far from transit to make them unattractive compared to higher density ones near train service.
It's frankly ridiculous that Apple Park was allowed to be built in its current form, for example. It's 3mi from Caltrain, has a ridiculous requirement for parking and is terrible land use wise (though it does look cool). It could have easily been a tower nearer transit, if it wasn't for NIBMYism.
>It could have easily been a tower nearer transit, if it wasn't for NIBMYism.
i don't think it's really fair to blame the NIMBYs for that one. a sprawling, campus surrounded by a big buffer to keep it separate from the community is clearly what Apple wanted, not just what the city of Cupertino wanted. If they wanted to build something with more density and transit links that was integrated into the community, they could have.
If they could get rid of the level-crossings so that the caltrain doesnt have to constantly honk it's horn, then I'd consider living near a caltrain station.
Electric car or not shouldn't there always be an incentive for extra occupants? Those cars require a huge amount of resources to make and run. Personally, I think even the tax breaks are off. The biggest tax breaks should be from not owning a car at all. The second is probably not buying a new car because you're not using additional resources. Then maybe new electric cars followed with hybrids.
> Electric car or not shouldn't there always be an incentive for extra occupants? Those cars require a huge amount of resources to make and run. Personally, I think even the tax breaks are off. The biggest tax breaks should be from not owning a car at all. The second is probably not buying a new car because you're not using additional resources. Then maybe new electric cars followed with hybrids.
I responded to a similar comment above, but I'll repeat it here. If we want people to share the same vehicle in those lanes we should probably just close it to everything but buses during rush hour and then actually put more buses on the road.
New bus lanes on 85 were on the table as part of the Policy Advisory Board’s work. Haven’t been able to find any news on what’ll happen with those, unfortunately.
Both tolls or the requirement to have an "expensive car" (electric) quickly become discrimination against poor people. Possibly unintentional discrimination.
I think it should be simple occupancy based only - vehicles with 3 occupants or more only.
Scarce goods being expensive isn't discriminatory. Even if it were, the most direct way to address it would be to just give money to people who lack it, or offer a means-tested discount.
"Poor people" already drive less than higher income people, are more likely to depend on public transportation and suffer the consequences of living near polluted highways. They will disproportionately benefit from anti-congestion policies like tolling highway lanes.
> "Poor people" already drive less than higher income people
Big fat "citation needed" here. I'm pretty well off, and drive very little, because I can afford to live in a place where I can walk to most of my destinations, and I have an office-type job that lets me work from home (and not drive to an office), as opposed to working somewhere that requires me to be in person, like a service job.
At least in the bay area, the "poor people" you are talking about get pushed out of the main population centers, and have to commute longer and longer to get to their jobs. If anything, I would say "poor people" drive much more. But I expect this is also a function of location, and other factors.
> "Poor people" already drive less than higher income people, are more likely to depend on public transportation and suffer the consequences of living near polluted highways. They will disproportionately benefit from anti-congestion policies like tolling highway lanes.
Unsure if you're familiar with LA traffic patterns and driving habits, but that really isn't true. Except for living near polluted highways, that's true. If anything, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to commute further.
>Scarce goods being expensive isn't discriminatory.
Would you be saying this if we were talking about high commuter rail fares or park fees that are used as a backhanded way to "class up the place"? Because that's basically what tolls are.
>"Poor people" already drive less than higher income people,
Not in the context of toll roads. They don't go an extra 5mi to whole foods. They don't take frivolous trips. But none of that is what tolls are trying to solve. Tolls are trying to solve peak commute hour demand. This is a use case where poor people wind up using roads (or any other form of transit) proportionately more than the wealthy because their jobs tend to be less flexible.
Yes, they drive proportionately less for cross-town type stuff and a little less for commuting (because you can't justify a long commute for a poorly paid job) but the ones that do drive don't deserve to be the first kicked off the road so a bunch of HNers can drive 5mph faster.
>They will disproportionately benefit from anti-congestion policies like tolling highway lanes.
What? What? Do you seriously believe this? Poor people benefit massively from reduced cost (in time, money and frustration) because their other options are more curtailed so being able to economically justify a trip to Walmart to save 10% over the local option (or whatever) or a different commute to a job that pays marginally more is of larger benefit.
There's an effect called induced demand where adding more free lanes to a road actually increases congestion, not decrease. Traffic engineers in the bay area have studied this and found it would be the effect if they just opened the HOV lanes up to all traffic.
A toll expressway allows for relieving congestion on normal lanes without increasing road demand, and will pay for itself over time.
The theory of induced demand says that increasing the amount of roads/lanes available increases the amount of driving - not necessarily of congestion (which implies driving at slower speeds).
In areas that are basically entirely car-dependent, the implication is that more roads encourage more journeys, and that fewer roads result in more journeys not taken. It's unclear why persuading people not to travel is inherently a good thing. Presumably they're going somewhere to see people and do things.
Perhaps building new roads doesn't help them do that any faster, but there are more people getting to do the things that they want.
This sounds like the same sort of silly logic that claims a "road diet" will reduce traffic. Lots of California cities are reducing the number of traffic lanes for no sane reason.
Unfortunately it's hard data and not silly logic. I get the complaint, "we'll make roads worse to get cars to use them less". If it takes 1 minute to drive to the grocery store but 15 minutes to walk, nobody is ever going to walk. If it takes 15 minutes to drive and 15 minutes to walk, though, people will start walking.
The problem with adding lanes to roads is not that people want you to work out instead of sitting in your car. Nobody really cares. The problems is that it doesn't scale, there isn't space to add enough lanes to get everyone into a car. Additional lanes come at the cost of making the road less suitable for walking and biking, further pushing people into their cars unnecessarily. Hence road diets; use expensive urban land for something other than holding slow-moving cars for 3 hours a day.
Car-centric suburbs were an interesting experiment that didn't work out. Unfortunately, half of America owns equity in the failed experiment, so it's going to be a rough couple decades while we adjust to something more sustainable. (Self-driving electric cars aren't going to save them.)
Lol. Not only have they worked out, but virtually every developing country is building their own suburbs. Is traffic an annoying inconvenience, sure. But I (and most people) love the freedom, the space, the variety granted by a car out in the burbs rather than being stuck in a cramped, super-expensive, single-window box in a city somewhere, and relying on public transportation to get anywhere beyond 10 blocks. Been there, done that, for far too long.
Internet capacity isn't scaled by replacing public spaces with toxin-emitting machines, and you can't be hit by one of those machines while crossing the Internet to get to local businesses.
Whether or not you like cars, they're simply not sustainable. It's great that you have one and take advantage of the government subsidies, but it's not a thing that future generations are going to do.
Perhaps we should come up with a replacement before we degrade our infrastructure and reduce the efficiency we had. Also, your statement above basically admits that the infrastructure is being degraded "for the greater good", which is not what your responses above it claim. They claim that reducing traffic capacity results in less usage, but with no mention of the downside.
And your other response above implies that road maintenance is bankrupting suburban cities, but it's entirely possible that those cities are simply not properly prioritizing/managing their spending, which is a common problem in California politics.
The problem is not that they're "nice" or whatever, but that they are financially unsustainable. Property taxes aren't high enough to cover the maintenance on the infrastructure like water mains, sewage treatment, fiber optic Internet, etc. As a result, suburbs are going bankrupt right and left.
You're way off. Detroit (which is not a suburb) went bankrupt, and 62 of the top 75 most populous cities do not have enough money to pay their bills, totalling a massive $333 billion in unfunded debt.
Among most cities that declare, physical infrastructure is usually the least of their problems, it almost always is rooted in public employee pension guarantees that can't be met.
"Unfunded retirement liabilities are the main contributing factor to the $333.5 billion in city-level debt"
The two cities in the worst shape? NYC and Chicago, which are far more urban (and well-serviced by public transportation) than cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas or Anaheim which barely have any downtown urban core and are essentially just large glorified suburbs.
Propaganda about road engineering written by road engineers. Can you request these "studies"? Any data to share, post-project?
Induced demand is real, that's true. But the degree to which it changes things is highly suspect. Restricting a lane increases congestion in the other lanes. It encourages the far-left lane to make more extreme lane changes (people tend to stay in the fast lane as long as possible, then need to quickly cross 4 lanes to exit). And because it slows normal people down, it increases traffic on non-highways, which has a large number of negative issues: more severe accidents (head-ons and 90-degree impacts are quite rare on divided highways), more idling (more traffic at red lights, which then leads to more drivers having to wait 2 cycles), more pedestrian accidents and more traffic near schools, etc.
Artificial bottlenecks are not an improvement, if the true goal is to increase overall traffic throughput. If the goal is simply to raise revenue for the government, wink wink, then it works great.
So the entire (original) purpose of carpool lanes is to reduce the number of cars on the road. The idea is that if three people are driving in one car instead of in three separate cars, that is two less cars on the road. In aggregate, this should speed up the commute for everyone, even people who don't use the carpool lane. Sure, you are giving up a lane, but in return you are removing 3x the number of vehicles from the remaining lanes for every car in the carpool lane.
As for your speed difference issue, at least in Southern California, the carpool lane has a double yellow separating it from the regular lanes, hopefully giving some added safety since cars shouldn't move back and forth except at designated entry and exit sections.
A lot of people think the purpose is to reduce pollution from the cars removed from the road (i.e. only one car's pollution instead of three), but in reality it should reduce pollution even MORE than that (because fewer cars on the road means everyone can drive faster, reducing the time spent with your car polluting while stuck in traffic).
However, they messed this up by adding these other ways to drive in the carpool lane. Sure, an electric vehicle pollutes less, but letting them drive in the carpool lane eliminates the benefit of fewer cars on the road; three electric vehicles still take up the same amount of space on the road and cause the same traffic as three gas guzzlers.
Then they added paying a toll, which does nothing to reduce pollution at all, and is simply a way to generate revenue. This is completely counter to the original purpose.
So if they stuck to the original idea, I think it is worthwhile. In the original form, converting the carpool lane to a regular lane would not actually reduce the congestion for everyone, because while you are adding a lane, you are also increasing the number of cars on the road (of course there are a lot of factors that go into this... how many cars would carpool anyway, and how many cars are using the carpool lane at any one time).
Here in Southern California, however, the carpool lanes are almost pointless. During high traffic times, they are just as congested as the regular lanes. In fact, they are often times slower than the regular lanes when congestion is medium... since they are only one lane and you can't switch lanes during most sections, you can end up with one slower car holding back everyone.
I think carpool lanes are for public transportation. We just don’t have have volume to justify a whole lane so we let in other yahoos. It makes a huge diffidence in Seattle knowing the bus takes an hour and driving by myself would take an hour and a half. However, if I paid 15$ in tolls I could get there in 30 minutes.
> It makes a huge diffidence in Seattle knowing the bus takes an hour and driving by myself would take an hour and a half.
Where in Seattle is that true? I used to take the bus all the time before I got a car, but now it's hard to justify since the bus is usually 1.5-2x longer than by car...
For example from my apartment to Pike Place Market, Google Maps currently estimates 20 minutes by car and 37 minutes (if you don't miss any transfers!) by bus.
The demand is constant and does not change. You can only shuffle it around. You have a few choices:
1. Add lanes. This gives people the option to move to the suburbs with a long commute.
2. Build housing in urban areas. This gives people the option to live close to work without a commute.
3. Add public transportation connects the suburbs to the cities.
4. Massive homeless problem. This is because people cannot commute from the suburbs and cannot pay rent in the cities.
The government has the power to add lanes at the expense of smaller, more dangerous shoulders and medians. But the ability to add lanes only extends as far as the shoulders. For the most part, California has run out of shoulder in urban areas.
The government does not have the power to build housing because of NIMBYs.
Buses don't solve the problem of commuting between the suburbs and the cities. If you have to sit in traffic anyway, people will sit in traffic in their car. The government doesn't have the power to build light rail because that means tearing town existing structures, and again -- NIMBYs.
Demand fluctuates relative to amenities, jobs, goods, services available on either end of a thoroughfare. If people like the offerings in one metro area vs another, or in a suburb vs a larger city, more people travel to and from that place. If they have things they want to do in their own backyard, they do not do that. The distribution of all of those things changes over time because of course it does.
Thus the law of conservation of traffic flux is violated and none of your conclusions are sound.
Sure sounds like public transit design is a red herring, no? :o)
that demand is not a constant is the fundamental principle behind induced demand.
the better a drive is, the more people will do it. "the commute is actually okay" is the reason people buy houses in the suburbs. the people buying houses in the suburbs are the reason the commute becomes terrible. if the drive sucks, people will find a way to avoid it, whether that's finding recreational opportunities close to home, taking transit, buying a house in the city, or finding a job close to home (or working remote)
> "the commute is actually okay" is the reason people buy houses in the suburbs.
Speaking only for myself, I didn't buy a house in the suburbs because "the commute was ok", I bought a house in the suburbs because it was the only place I was able to purchase a place to live.
My rent on my 1-bedroom apartment near the city was $500 a month more than the mortgage+property taxes in the suburbs. The mortgage is constant, the house is appreciating value, some of the mortgage goes towards the principal and I "keep" that. The rent was going up 5-10% per year.
The commute was not ok. But I couldn't afford not to. $500 a month is $500 a month.
In the decade or so since, my house appreciated significantly in value, and I was able to purchase a house 5 minutes from work. But I could not have done that without sacrificing much of my sanity for a not-ok commute for nearly a decade.
The reality is that housing and traffic are deeply, deeply entwined.
> "the commute is actually okay" is the reason people buy houses in the suburbs.
No, the reason they do it is to buy a house with three bedrooms and a yard for $225k instead of, say, paying $4000/mo for a shoebox they can never meaningfully aspire to own. The Commute is only a candidate reason they wouldn't make the move.
(And if large cities had sane housing policies and lots of supply, this all might be less of a problem, but, well, that's not our world.)
Reducing lanes does not reduce demand, it just reduces transportation options and increases costs, indirectly damaging the economy. The passengers are trading time for money in the sense that a single car/van/bus is more cost efficient, but takes more time per passenger. It's true that some work can be done while on the road, but it's not a great work environment. Also, it's not always possible to align the schedules of all passengers.
I've been really frustrated by this change, especially on 237. I used to drive in the faster lane on weekdays around noon to get around slower traffic by myself because that was legal. Now I'd need to pay for the privilege.
If I were confident that at least the money would go to road surface maintenance, I'd be partially okay with it. But I'm not, so this is even more ridiculous.
101 has some incredibly bad road surface stretches. 237 is 2 or 3 lanes for most stretches, and periodically there will be clusters of cars going 5-10mph under the limit and now I can't pass them unless I want to pay a Fastrak fee.
Mind-boggling, except that they know people here can "afford" it so they think it gives them free-reign to charge.
I remember asking about this at one of the community meetings in Redwood City for the San Mateo 101 Express Lanes project. Projections at the time showed a clear trend in increased car traffic on the 101, and thus even HOV lanes would have the same traffic jams as the regular lanes. They couldn't even keep the express lanes as HOV 2+; they needed to change it to 3+ in order to ensure a minimum travel speed of 35mph during rush hour.
That said I do find it amusing that if you drive up the I-5 up to Oregon, people suddenly know to keep the left lane clear as a passing lane as soon as you cross into Oregon. (But cross back into California and the _exact same cars_ in your pack will suddenly coast slowly in the leftmost lane.)
I don't see why we have these pay lanes at all. If you choose to drive rather than finding an alternative (our admittedly not-great transit system, moving so you live closer to work, etc.[0]), why should you be allowed to pay for the ability to externalize that choice? It just ends up being a regressive tax, and the people who can't afford it end up paying with their time.
Just designate one or two lanes as un-tolled HOV3 to encourage carpooling and leave it at that. Direct the funds for road-widening and toll schemes toward improving public transit.
Personal travel around the bay area (regardless of whether it's by car, bus, train, or boat) is abysmally embarrassing. Everything done since I moved here 18 years ago have been ineffectual band-aids.
[0] Yes, I know these options aren't available to everyone, at least not without significant personal or financial sacrifice, but I bet enough people to make a difference could actually make some useful changes.
This is the most interesting thing I disagree about:
> It just ends up being a regressive tax
I don't think it's useful to think of paying for goods or services as taxes, just because they're sold by a government entity.
I don't think of buying a Bart ticket or sending a package through USPS as a tax. They're not that different from buying a bus ticket from Greyhound or sending a package through FedEx.
It does seem like they are slowly resurfacing 101. Some sections have a mix of old/new like some lanes have been resurfaced recently. But who knows if that’s paid for by fast lane tolls or not.
I bet they still haven't figured out a fix for the area around the Old Oakland Rd. exit/overpass. IIRC the water table is technically above the road, so any time there's rain that section floods; in addition to that, it also constantly has terrible potholes and they appear almost as quickly as some are fixed.
A few days ago this was mentioned (yet again) on the Mercury News column "Roadshow" [1]. The column explained that Caltrans did offer to to fix it, but the change was rejected about 30 years ago.
When stuck in between and immovable object and an unstoppable force, yield. IE stop driving so much. I've cut my driving down 90% and I am happier, its crazy how driving makes people upset.
US 101 in that stretch is actually part of the National Highway System and gets federal funding, though notionally all US highways are state highways with a national grid number.
oh man you're right. I thought that green signage denoted a county road, like you see in the side by side the 237 being green, and the 101 being white. Now I'm curious where that tabulation was I saw years ago that detailed the differences in the sign shape color and appearance.
County highways are named with a letter followed by a number. For example Lawrence Expressway is G2. You can see the faded G2 sign at the exit from 237. https://goo.gl/maps/NGaa56Qkb9a8hzXg8
In the next 25 years, all the gas stations are going to close and all that gas tax revenue will need to be replaced, as that's how the roads are maintained. Gas tax is a usage tax, so to replace it with something equivalent, we'll need to be able to track our vehicle's road usage. Maybe cars will just self report, as new cars will just be a consumer electronics device with wheels and a broadband connection anyways.
But more than likely the solution will be backwards compatible one at first, like all the license plates becoming e-License plates, with eInk screens and a Fast-Trak style responder for tracking tolls.
Extrapolating on this, the idea that you could get into a vehicle and drive along public roads without those roads making a record of your passage is one that will slowly go away. Get used to it. Seriously.
They could just have you report odometer readings when you register it annually. We could even see a smog style car safety inspection to ensure that the numbers match up every few years. If all else fails an odometer reading when selling and the seller owes the taxes on those miles. No system is fool proof, but that would be a lot easier and cheaper than trying to somehow record every mile driven.
No state is going to want to give up revenues for people who use their roads but live elsewhere. Plenty of major cities are on the border with other states with commuters going back and forth.
Oregon tested GPS trackers as a way to track where those miles are driven and tax people accordingly (you could get a rebate on your tax paid at the pump). Understandably, people balked at having their driving tracked so closely and it never got out of the testing phase.
Now, with pretty much every new car having a tracker installed by the manufacturer, some state will surely try again.
They could just make truckers pay it all. They do the vast majority of damage to the roads as it is. For side roads we could just pay the old fashioned way with normal taxes. People without cars still benefit from the roads existence.
Agreed. Road damage scales as the _fourth power_ of the axle weight. That's bonkers, you don't see that exponent in many phenomena.
The question is how to move the funds around, as state taxes and road funding stop at state borders, but vehicles don't. And of course states will have a patchwork of registration rules, and won't share money with each other. So the trucking industry will lobby some state to be a tax haven, and all trucks will just be registered there.
If only we had some sort of organization that allows states to solve issues that happen between states, like a larger government function...
This is a good example of policy you get when the people making policy don't understand (or understand but don't want to understand) physics but do understand that the transportation lobby is well-funded and well-connected.
On one hand they get a bunch of kickbacks for their reelection war-chest and some roads fail 5 years after their re-election is over anyway and someone else will be blamed for it. On the other hand they directly fund their opponent who is unlikely to turn down those dollars, possibly fail in their reelection bid, and successfully save some roads that everyone will just assume would have lasted anyway.
It's not hard to see that it's practically impossible for any other outcome, the system is practically designed to create this kind of situation.
The tax amount would be a function of tire size since that correlates (via vehicle weight) with wear and tear on the roads.
To handle early replacement (flat tires, etc.), when tires are replaced, give a rebate based on remaining tread.
There would probably be a huge market for illegal tires (similar to illegal cigarettes), so that would require enforcement. You'd also need some way to stop tire theft. Maybe encode the vehicle's license plate number into a chip in the tire or something.
In the UK there are ANPR cameras everywhere. The police can and will pull your driving history (or at least when you passed the cameras), and if you are 'wanted' it will ping the local police force when you drive past one.
Does this exist in the US? This has been going on for nearly 20 years here.
>In the UK there are ANPR cameras everywhere. The police can and will pull your driving history (or at least when you passed the cameras), and if you are 'wanted' it will ping the local police force when you drive past one.
The systems exist to varying extent on a state by state basis, but they're mostly not used for mundane stuff because the American public even in the most boot-lickey states won't just roll over and take it when the .gov tries to use skynet to screw them out of extra money and the powers that be would rather use the systems sparingly than anger the public and get rules and laws that say they can't.
No many places like Arizona those cameras were made illegal. Some were installed, but the people voted to remove them. That's the difference between citizens and subjects.
As with any time this question is asked, try to remember the US is the third largest nation in both geographic size and population, with 320 million citizens spread out over 50 quasi nation-states, a handful of which themselves are bigger than most countries, and all with their own legal systems. We share currency, an army, a flag and a constitution. The rest is a roll of the dice.
That said, at a Federal level, I've never heard of this and where I live in Northern California, I haven't heard of anything to that extent either. That doesn't mean it's not happening in some municipality in Michigan or Hawaii, or even in a different part of my own state. Though, honestly, I doubt it.
The way we do surveillance here is more roundabout: First we allow right wing news media to scare the shit out of all the old people in the country, who then go out and buy doorbell and other Wifi cameras and start live streaming every square inch of their property, 24/7. Then we either compel the bigco to give the government access to the feed, complete with gag order, or the NSA just hacks in and takes it anyways.
Most people who don't live in the US (literally 95% of the worlds population) live in countries with states, provinces or other local governments. This isn't uncommon, and the US isn't paticularly unique, outside of its populus' general arrogance.
But there must be cameras recording number plates for toll collection (for people who don't have the transponder). Could the police subpoena that data for law enformcement purposes?
Oh, sure! In fact, there was a link from HN I can remember from a long time ago where a reporter in the Bay Area did Freedom of Information act to get any records about his car kept by the government. If I remember correctly, he got back way more detail and discovered way more cameras are out there than he thought.
So yeah, where there are publicly run cameras like for traffic, that data is usually available to law enforcement without much trouble.
Many states already charge EVs and PHEVs a higher annual registration fee than ICE vehicles. I understand replacing the gas taxes, but very weird since it completely works against federal and state EV/PHEV incentives.
I agree with the premise that governments will have to find a way to make up for the loss of gas tax revenue, but it seems like a really expensive solution, and it doesn't capture use of minor roads.
Couldnt we also just charge a tax on electric vehicle charging stations or even integrate a tax with electric vehicle chargers in homes and multi unit dwellings?
I dont personally oppose some tolls (like bridges or even this) but the gas tax (or modern equivalent) completely going away does not seem like it will happen.
Why bother! In 10 years in California I have never seen anyone get pulled over for carpool lane violations, but pretty much every time I'm on the road, I witness one.
Exactly. The whole system seems hilariously naïve if you have any real-world driving experience in the bay area.
I drove 205/580->680->880->237 daily for years, one of the first express corridors. People constantly crossing over the double-white line, intentionally exiting the lane at each transponder to skip tolls, driving on the shoulder, driving past a huge line of cars so they can bully their way in at the last moment. CHP seems to let most of that slide - they're busy with the massive accidents that constantly result.
I highly doubt they're going to care about 1 vs 2 vs 3, and I feel for them if they're expected to.
The last two years have shown us that people will routinely and casually break the rules merely to avoid mild discomfort, even while lives are on the line and people are dying. I don’t see how these voluntary transponders are even remotely effective.
I've seen at least a 4-5 cars pulled over for carpool violations in norcal, usually in considerable traffic. Cathartic event really. One time there was a lot of cheers from other cars and horns honking.
On a normal day it can be tough to tell why people are getting pulled over though. You'd have to be able to observe the conditions and watch them get pulled over which is a pretty short window given the attention & timing factors.
This just tells me that I think all our anecdotes here are useless. I haven't done the peninsula commute thing for a while (10+ years), but for the 6 years when I did, I cannot remember even one instance of seeing someone obviously pulled over for a carpool violation. (Granted, it can be hard to tell, as you say.)
I wonder if there are public stats on this. How many people are cited? Can we estimate the total number of violations somehow to get a rough percentage of people who actually get caught?
Anecdotally, I've heard from many people that in pre-pandemic traffic on the peninsula, the occasional carpool ticket was worth it for the time savings they got from taking the carpool lane. Carpool lane violations don't accrue points, so there's no insurance hikes or potential to lose your license. Especially with things like Waze being available, in slow-moving traffic cops didn't change their positions often and so you could fairly reliably avoid being in violation when you were in sight of them.
As someone who used to drive electric in the HOV lane through Emeryville CA, I've seen many people get busted.
Conversely, driving the same through the peninsula I never saw any. It seems to be up to the discretion of the county/local cops to enforce, which isn't a conviction of the rule itself but really the enforcing authority.
I think this system should improve enforcement. Now, the state will bill you for driving on the lane with an automated system. They can bill every single person in the lane. It doesn’t depend on the police prioritizing the issue anymore.
The express lane has cameras and they take photos of cars without a fastrak so they can send you a bill. Might they also use those cameras to check how many people are in the car? If you break the rules, you’re generating evidence and making it easy for the state to collect more revenue.
You've really gotta try to get pulled over here. I just broke my streak, been in the Bay Area for 20 years but finally got pulled over last year. First time ever interacting with police at the side of the road in California. 20 years.
Lest you think I'm a saint, I got 4 tickets the year I moved away from Seattle alone.
Man I really hate the new HOV lanes, there are too many negligent drivers that drive below the speed limit, at least with a carpool lane you could overtake.
Is this a Bay Area specific thing? The terms "HOV lanes" and "carpool lanes" are used interchangeably in my experience. Are you just calling out separated lanes? The reason for the separation is that traffic in those lanes is often moving much faster than the other lanes which makes it very dangerous to give people the possibility of pulling into that lane unexpectedly. The ideal HOV/carpool lanes should have two lanes to allow passing and be separated from the rest of the lanes to promote safety. The 110 in Los Angeles is a great example and it uses the same transponders with switches that the article is discussing.
In my experience, the vast majority of HOV/carpool lanes are single lanes, although some stretches like the 110 and the 91 are doubled up and are a much better experience. It's hard to believe the 405, of all places, is a single HOV lane and it bunches up pretty much continuously.
Although, on the 91, I don't know that it uses transponder settings since there's a dedicated "3+" lane when you approach reading areas, which are situated right in front of CHP buildings (so they can see if you're really 3+?)
Aren't all HOV lanes separated? Any that I've seen in Canada and the eastern US only allow you to merge at dedicated locations. The new ones on the 400 in Canada actually have a merge lane appears for a few hundred metres before shrinking down again, even though there's no physical barrier, it's all just paint.
I don't think that's the kind of separation they're talking about. It's technically illegal to cross that yellow line, but I've never heard of anyone getting in trouble for crossing out and back in to go around a grandpa going 45 in a 70. There are some HOV lanes in Florida that actually split into an entirely separate side road and some that have those soft rollover columns you can drive through but it will scratch up your car so it's really only for emergencies.
Exactly. There is a difference between not allowed to merge and not physically able to merge.
Merging not being allowed is still dangerous because people don't always follow the rules. It might even be more dangerous than lanes that always allow merging because then at least drivers in the faster lane can prepare themselves to expect merging.
A separated lane makes it impossible (or at the very least potentially damaging to the vehicle) to merge.
Here is an example of what I think is the ideal HOV setup[1]. There are two lanes so a single slow driver can be overtaken and there are physical dividers that prevent unexpected merging. You can also see the toll signs mentioned in the article that display the passenger number set on the transponders as discussed in the article.
Yeah that's a pretty good HOV lane in my opinion (as a non city planner lol). Sometimes you still get two slowpokes side-by-side, but it's pretty rare.
No. There are several HOV facilities where it's just a regular lane, especially for 'part-time' HOV facilities (which are basically "this lane is HOV during rush hour, regular otherwise"). For example, HOV lanes on the NJT: https://goo.gl/maps/pKzjvAgFUhac1bva7
Before the changes talked about in this article, the HOV lanes on US101 in NorCal were all "open access". You could enter and exit them at any place you wished, just like any other lane.
That's the case for many other highways with HOV lanes in NorCal as well.
I imagine the main difference is that most of these "open access" HOV lanes are time-limited; outside of the morning and evening weekday rush hours they're not HOV lanes. It makes more sense to have stronger separation for full-time HOV (or toll) lanes.
I was under the assumption that HOV lanes cannot be crossed over (double or single white lines) while carpools are dotted and are open to traffic flowing in and out.
Of course you can only use it as an overtake lane in none-carpool hours, but now that’s not even an option.
There's no distinction between HOV and carpool; they're just different names for the same thing. Whether or not the lanes are separated with designated entry/exit points or are open-access is a matter of local policy and design for that specific highway.
I'd frequently get stuck behind buses, box trucks, and vehicles towing trailers. It's astounding how the latter two are allowed. I somewhat understand municipal buses in an effort to ensure more people ride, and it wouldn't be as annoying if it weren't coupled with the other two.
Do you like to merge onto a 65 mph highway going 40? Do you like to drive your Prius in the left lane without passing anyone, with no one in front of you, and a trail of cars behind you?
But that applies to every lane in CA. The equilibrium seems to be staggered traffic in every lane going the same speed so that no one can cut you off and you know someone is filling your blind spots at all times. Oddly enough the right-hand lane is often free (mostly on 101N between Gilroy and San Jose) since no one wants to interact with merging traffic (one of the very few traffic laws/suggestions anyone follows).
If you instead just think of everyone who drives as very lazy, unengaged, and completely checked out - this is how you get the behavior of traffic in the bay area. Everyone doing everything they can to not have to signal, to change lanes, to slow down or speed up, and to avoid interacting with other traffic.
The issue here is that people choose it in an non-optimal way and thus it makes many people having to do a lot more to get around others.
And, yeah, the right lane is what I end up having to go into to get past people all the time because they create those walls constantly. And they're not wanting to interact with merging traffic because they're lazy.
Hey man, how about you just figure out some way to relax on the drive instead of psychotically swerving around people? In order to shave a couple of minutes off your commute, you're putting yourself in mortal danger (and worse: you're endangering innocent people who don't actually deserve to die in a fiery car wreck)
Here are some suggestions:
1. Move away
2. Move closer to your job
3. Rob a bank and then retire, since you're risking death every day anyway
If you think going into the right lane is risking death - you shouldn't be on the road. You clearly are not good at risk assessment and should not be trusted with a vehicle.
Every lane change that anyone makes significantly increases the risk of a crash vs. just staying in the same lane. This is basic driver's ed right here.
Passing on the right is illegal most places for a reason: it's harder for the driver to your left to see you. The whole point of the convention of having faster traffic to the left and slower to the right is to increase predictability of behavior.
I agree with the parent you're replying to. Chill out and stop weaving in and out of traffic. Yes, it's annoying that people don't move to the right to yield to faster traffic, but ultimately you only save seconds or a small number of minutes. The risk -- assessment of which you seem to be not particularly good at -- isn't worth it. I'm not saying I follow my own advice 100% of the time, but I am under no illusion that I'm being safe when I don't.
> Every lane change that anyone makes significantly increases the risk of a crash vs. just staying in the same lane.
Ah, yeah, that's why you see 10,000 people dying every second from changing lanes out on 101.
Get off the roads guys. You're really bad at assessing risk. If you think CHANGING LANES is going to KILL EVERYONE then you are in the same group as flat earthers as far as critical thinking goes. Stick with caltrain if this is how you guys truly feel. Your ideal mode of transport I'm sure. It's only got one track going each direction - can't even change lanes!
Nobody's complaining about changing lanes. You clearly implied above that you have to weave over to the far right, pass cars on the right, then weave back to the left to pass more cars on the left. That behavior is unacceptable. It might only be a 1/5000 chance of causing an accident, but when hundreds of idiots do it every day, you end up with tens of thousands of car crashes in the Bay Area every year and so many deaths they aren't even newsworthy.
I don't like having to duke it out with dangerous idiots like yourself every day on the road, so I rent an apartment a mile from my office.
When driving your own car is outlawed in a couple of decades, I'm going to be pissed, but then I'm going to remember talking to psychopaths like you and just grudgingly accept it
I was an aggressive driver when I was younger. Always 5-10mph over the limit, pass at every opportunity, threshold braking at every stop, flooring the gas pulling away from each, generally ignoring warnings to slow down on curves, etc. I only ever got in one very minor accident (I hit a wooden sign that was so rotted it broke at the base and didn't even leave a mark on my bumper) but did have a few close calls (coming up to an exit with traffic too fast and fishtailing into a spinout on the interstate, thankfully not hitting anyone.)
Then I decided to gather data. My daily commute was about 15 minutes, maybe 10 miles of mostly 2-lane highway, some turns I had a stop sign, some didn't, so a bit a variation and reasonable opportunities for my aggressive driving. I did an experiment for a few days where I would drive either as aggressively as I normally did, even kicking it up a notch for science, or just chilling out and taking it easy; and timing how long the drive took me with either style.
After a few trials, I found that the super-aggressive driving did save time over the relaxed style; but it was less than 30 seconds, an amount that could easily be lost or gained by chance at the one stoplight on my drive. And as a bonus, with the relaxed style, when I arrived at my destination, I was actually more relaxed, with my pulse around 70 instead of 90.
I've stuck to a more relaxed style ever since. There have been more than a few times where someone who was in a hurry passed me over a double yellow line and flips my the bird for having the nerve to drive the speed limit and zooms off, and then a mile or two down the road I pull up right behind the exact same driver at a stoplight or other non-passable thing, and I feel that I've made the right choice.
> and then a mile or two down the road I pull up right behind the exact same driver at a stoplight or other non-passable thing, and I feel that I've made the right choice.
This is what we in the business call confirmation bias. As many times as that's happened - I'm sure there are many times where they also didn't get stuck at the traffic light. Yet - you never saw them. Thus you never thought about. Thus... we call it confirmation bias. Interesting.
Are you suggesting that there's lots of time that a driver passes me over a double yellow line, flips me off, and I never see them again? Absolutely. TBH, I never think about them, because they don't affect me. Neither do the ones that I pull up behind, but those make me laugh and feel good.
Eh. Idk if I’d call it proper. It’s no different than the “proper” experiments that have a trial of 5 people to test a new drug.
Problem is that they only did it for a few days. That’s not enough time for the margin of error to be very good. We all know traffic varies a lot week by week and day by day. Variance in just timing of the damn street lights is enough to make 30 seconds easily. You hit the stop light at the wrong time where I live - you’re sitting for a minute or more and that’s a big sway on a 15 minute commute.
Yes, I only did the experiment for a few days. (it was 20-odd years ago so I don't remember the exact details, but I think I did it maybe 3 times in each direction, less than a week total.) Is there variance? Sure. That's kind of the point - any amount of time I actually saved was more than swallowed up by the variances. In the end, the tiny amount of time I could save was not worth the heightened stress level.
But in the end, the experiment was for me and me alone. If you'd like to run your own more rigorous experiment and show how much time you can save by weaving through traffic, go right ahead; I've found what works better for me.
"any vehicle proceeding upon a highway at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time shall be driven in the right-hand lane"
Indiana has one of these too, and I _loved_ it. Blocking traffic is super unsafe for all kinds of reasons:
- Sometimes people need to get by (emergencies)
- You're a blown tire / unexpected road hazard away from swerving into the car next to you
If you're driving the same speed as the car next to you, feel free to tap your breaks, let them ahead a couple lengths, and then tuck in behind them. It's safer!
Yeah, except the last time I got in to this, it turned out that Texas was one of the very few states with a well-written sane driving rule.
Executive summary of Texas driving law: you must stay as far to the right as you can, without crossing the marker to the shoulder; if you pass, you must do so on the left, without impeding the flow of (oncoming) traffic.
Actually, to lazy to dig it up, but TX has these huge lane sized shoulders on many roads. They are called "improved shoulders" and there are a half dozen cases where they are legally used as lanes. Including the case of a single lane road where someone is stopped in the main travel lane turning left, the shoulder may be used to pass them! (On the right).
The more common (legal) use though is as a turning lane.
One question I've never heard an answer to, when someone suggests it's alright to hang in the left and middle lane as long as you're doing the speed limit, is ... how do you decide which law you're going to disregard? Because "slower traffic keep right' does not have a 'unless you are going the speed limit' exception.
Right, and that's the thing. The general rule of thumb is that if you aren't going faster than the traffic in the lane to your right, you should move to the right, and keep moving to the right until the traffic to the right of you is slower.
Speed limits aren't really important to this particular discussion. In the US, at least, they're set mostly based on observed traffic (85th percentile, even, I believe), and not based on any real assessment of what's safe. And there are also political and funding issues at play (consider in the 1970s there was a 55mph federal max speed limit law that was intended to increase fuel efficiency in order to lower dependence on foreign oil).
I consider speed limits to be more suggestions; what matters most is that you keep up with traffic and stick to the lane that most closely matches your desired speed. If you're uncomfortable with the speed necessary to keep up with even the rightmost lane, you probably shouldn't be driving on that road anyway.
In regions where they enforce the laws written about moving over for traffic - you get pulled over even if you're going above the limit.
Flow of traffic is more important than speed. Now if you're going the speed limit in the right most lane (not well below the speed limit) then you'll not likely have an issue even if you are "impeding" traffic at that point. It's more about taking up the left/passing lanes.
Btw - these rules exist even for single lane roads. You will need to pull over for traffic behind you even if you're going the speed limit or above. Generally there is some advisories or rules about 3 cars being behind you.
I'll happily skirt the line of the "slower traffic keep right" if it means inconveniencing the self-entitled, aggressive drivers that are willing to break the speed limit but are too lazy to actually try to take action to get that speed limit raised.
Doesn't really matter, the speed limit is a sham anyway. We often point to how everything is better in Europe, try going to Portugal and sitting in the fast lane and not passing at 150kph (18 mph over limit). You'll have someone on your bumper, flashing their high beams within 30 seconds.
Generally what I've noticed on the Peninsula (like driving 280 N/S or sometimes 101) and the South Bay is that people drive like they should be in the left-most lane the farther away they are from their exit. This means regardless of what speed they'll be driving, they tend to gravitate toward the faster lanes and inevitably create traffic. Not only that, but many of these people then cut across all 4 or 5 lanes of traffic at the last possible minute because they realize almost too late that their exit is next and they don't understand that in most cases they can just use the next exit if they miss the first one.
Not to defend shitty drivers but many exits up the 280 and 101 on the peninsula don't have easy turn arounds if you miss an exit. If you miss an exit you sometimes have to go a ways out of the way to turn around. This is especially the case on the 101's exits. You can hit lots of traffic, lights, and no u-turn intersections before being able to turn around and fight the same back to the on-ramp.
Then that means the driver should plan to be in a lane close to exiting as far back as necessary to avoid dangerous maneuvers. Even if using a GPS, it'll usually say which exit you need to take; just combine that with the sign markers every so often that say the upcoming exits and you'll know how soon the exit you need is coming up. It's really not that difficult.
Again, not to defend shitty drivers, but this commentary is largely impractical on the 101. Many exits on the 101 are poorly designed cloverleaf style exits and signage on that freeway is terrible.
The cloverleaf exits are very long meaning to get on the off ramp you have to merge into the right lane earlier than the signage suggests. It's easy to get trapped in the faster lanes by assholes that won't let you merge. There's many situations where you simply can't merge right early.
The 101 up the peninsula is a terrible freeway and its poor design and signage causes problems for even courteous and attentive drivers. It was interesting to drive on during the early days of the pandemic when traffic was significantly reduced. It became painfully apparent the design of the 101's exits were made for those super low traffic levels and woefully inadequate with today's levels.
The small amount of discomfort you experience from people driving too slowly is nothing compared to the impacts of people trying to drive as fast as possible. Turns out, that traffic paradoxically moves FASTER (in the aggregate) when you reduce speed limits.
The root cause is speed differential between traffic elements or groups thereof. You can either bring the upper bound down with draconian enforcement or you can bring the lower bound up, mostly by raising the statutory speed limit. The latter is far more popular.
What really bugs me right now is that the lanes are not hard-divided or at least 4-stripe divided from the regular lanes like they are in Southern CA.
So what people are doing is switching lanes without fear of penalty in the stretches between the monitoring gantries, and either causing inconvenience or outright danger to others driving responsibly.
> What really bugs me right now is that the lanes are not hard-divided or at least 4-stripe divided from the regular lanes like they are in Southern CA.
I actually think this is fine, but the signage is _awful_. In a bit of inverse awfulness, look at the 10 in the SGV. They converted a bus lane to an HOV decades (and now Fastrak). It's almost worthless unless your goal is to get from El Monte to downtown. There are virtually no exits/entrances. Also, I resent the effort spent on it because none of its glaring problems have ever been dealt with and my understanding is that it was basically converted to a toll road to comply with some federal requirement to lower travel times. So, the local agencies were able to claim they saved 2 minutes on the commute to downtown and got to keep the federal funding. Way to target the metric there.
The difference between how NorCal and SoCal does it is really bizarre. NorCal also has a lot of timed carpool lanes which are slowly being converted to these inane Lexus lanes. The timed carpool lanes felt like they were never a good idea because it seemed to generally cause confusion and instead increased congestion as people weren't sure whether they could use them. Also, I remain infuriated that the on-ramps in NorCal have carpool lanes enforced 24/7 instead of like they are in SoCal--only when the meter is actually on.
This system seems quite stupid. Surely the expenditure could be better invested in public transit. Not only is public transit orders of magnitude more effective in terms of people moved per hour, it's also much more equitable.
I'm not sure about the 101 project in SF but we have exactly this in southern california and believe it or not it's been great. They integrated the HOV lanes into a Bus Rapid Transit system and use demand pricing to ensure that the lanes almost always stay moving.
AFAIK the project expenditure is covered by people who want to get there faster. In this case the city/Metro gets to deploy more public transit without having to pay for it, and without having to charge riders more money. There are plans for expansion of the system as it's been very popular.
When I went to the planning meeting for the San Mateo 101 Express Lanes project in Redwood City, these lanes _were_ seen as an investment in mass transit. The tech shuttles will use these Express Lanes instead of sitting in mixed traffic, taking load off of the Caltrain (which, pre-pandemic, was at capacity during rush hour and needs electrification and grade separation work to run more frequent trains). Also, constituents in bay area dislike public-transit-only investments (see San Mateo's historical rejection of the BART proposal).
Even if this system cost $20 million to set up, how much public transit does that buy you? 100 feet of subway track? 20 buses? 1 mile of streetcar track?
100 feet of subway track? I wish I could get those rates. NYC's latest Second Avenue Subway budget is $6.3 billion for 1.5 miles, or, about $800,000 a foot. You can get 25 feet of subway track.
California's not quite that bad, but, it's close to that bad. The Downtown Extension for Caltrain is $3 billion for a mile. SF's Central Subway is $923 million a mile. So sure, you can get about 114 feet of subway, but it'll be the short little LRVs and not like BART or anything nice-ish.
I'm told that, besides general competence issues and political-football games about who gets to builds the subway (contractors, ewwwwww) ... a lot of it comes from deep stations with onerous fire-safety guidelines that require massive mezzanines. These stations are mined out through narrow shafts instead of doing cut-and-cover, adding expense and inviting delays. See e.g. https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/1064907564230557696
But it's mostly the fact that the leadership doesn't care, doesn't have to care, and is actively incentivized not to care.
Last I checked, Vancouvers electric trolley buses (with the poles and the overhead lines) were ~1.5 mil Canadian, with the regular diesel buses costing only about a million Canadian.
buses are generally significantly less than a million per bus. BYD electric buses have a unit cost of about $750k which is "approximately double the cost" of a standard diesel bus
Perhaps it reflects the transport choices of the lawmakers. They spend more time frustrated on the 101 than they spend attempting to use a bus or train.
That could well be the case, and I would personally argue that that is a good part of the problem.
For example, in Europe, it's quite normal for lawmakers to cycle or take public transport to the office. Obviously, some/most of it is performative to present a public image of the politician as a "man of the people", but it does expose them to the problems of the lay person as opposed to sitting in a chauffeured car.
Needless to say, our public transport systems (and cycling) are much more sane, affordable, and efficient options here. They are by no means perfect, but they are a damn good way to get around in most cities.
It doesn't mean you can't or don't drive, but often driving is massively slower or less convenient (especially inside the urban core), so you jump on the metro/train/tram or bicycle to get where you need to be.
The public doesn't want to fund mass transit with higher taxes, etc. so we get these toll systems. Up in Seattle there are similar mixed toll and high occupancy vehicle lanes that were built to help fund expansion of light rail systems, bridges, etc.
> in Seattle there are similar mixed toll and high occupancy vehicle lanes that were built to help fund expansion of light rail systems
Tolls from the express toll lanes or on state routes like 520 and 167 don't pay for the transit system in Puget Sound. The long and short of why is that because funding indirectly comes from the motor vehicle fuel tax account, at least as backing for the bonds, the state constitution prohibits spending the money on anything but roads.
The closest you can get is that part of the ETL projects on I-405/SR 522 will build a full ETL pathway that bus rapid transit can use as part of Sound Transit's STRIDE network from Renton to Bothell, but that's only for transit insofar as public transit vehicle operators don't have to pay tolls.
(Washington State contributed, until the pandemic and assuming Move Washington passes, $0.00 to Puget Sound transit agencies. The state legislature insists that transit is a local issue. The state kicked in some money to local agencies to help during the pandemic but the bulk of that money was supplied by the federal government as part of stimulus bills. If Move Washington passes, it will be the first time the state funds any transit operations west of the Cascades in over a decade.)
I think it's important to emphasis that this is only the American public. Many other countries _do_ prefer to fund public transport with general taxation. And things are much saner as a result: high quality public transport and bike lanes, without arcane rules around transponders and specific highway lanes.
That's not saying much; our standards are incredibly low.
> Caltrain is pretty awesome
Caltrain is awesome if you are one of the rare few who live within walking distance of a station and your destination is within walking distance of a station, or if only one of those two things is true, but your local Caltrain station has a parking lot that you can afford, or there's actually good bus service to get you the last mile.
Unfortunately, those conditions are not true for many, many people.
On top of that, Caltrain is ridiculously slow, and doesn't run anywhere near frequently enough, even during rush hour.
I'm only familiar with Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany - there are basically zero toll roads here. The occasional bridge or tunnel is tolled, but they are very much the exception as opposed to the rule.
These systems are designed to be making money which then (theoretically) should go back into transport infrastructure. I agree we need more public transit - but keep in mind (generally) along this exact same route Caltrain provides some very good and very clean service already. I would really love to see that service extended all the way around the bay.
Note that you have to have one of the newer transponders to be able to indicate how many occupants you have. If you have an old-school transponder it assumes you just have two occupants, and you pay the highest rate.
I recently ordered a new one, and it appears to be free, assuming you send back the previous transponder.
Wow this isn't known. The signs don't say that you need a new transponder to get the discount anywhere. I did always question how they'd know but quite simply no one made it clear. I haven't yet been hit since I don't drive often but wow this just seems to be looking to catch drivers who simply read the sign and assume they're good to go since they match the conditions listed on the sign. It turns out there's a hidden condition!
If you have a transponder, you wouldn't necessarily even know that you were being charged for 2 occupants when you had 3+. You'd have to look at your detailed bill (who does that?) and remember how many occupants you had on which trips. Most people would probably just be overcharged until they realized that they need to get the transponder with toggle.
There may be signs somewhere; I've not seen any. But regardless, it's not a matter of required or not required. You can still use these lanes with regular old Fastrak, I believe. You just get charged the highest rate. Ditto if your transponder is broken or not in your car, and you are identified by registered license plate.
Of course, this is too much information to try to explain on a road sign, as drivers zoom past at 65+ MPH, and they're fumbling for their transponder in the glove box. That's why it would have been great if they had sent out emails to customers, whom they regularly send account-related updates.
I think the newest transponders are actually the transparent RFID stickers that are smaller than even the "FastTrak Flex" batteryless switchable transponders.
Note that the different FastTrak operators in California have DRASTICALLY different fee structures. Some have monthly fees, some don't. Some charge for switchable transponders, some give them for free, some require a deposit, some only need your license plate # to charge you, etc.
Great! Some folks have had transponders for a decade or more, as they don't need replacing very often. AFAIK, this is the first time that there has been a reason to get a new transponder if your existing transponder is still operational. It's also not communicated very well to customers. I've talked with many people who wondered how Fastrak knows how many people are in your vehicle. They were unaware that there are new transponders with a toggle.
Neither did I. Been using the same once since... 2008. And I log in periodically to check charges and change my address and update CC and was never notified that maybe I should consider upgrading.
BTW there's also a special version for 'clean air vehicles'. But it's not for all clean air vehicles, and I think my plugin hybrid doesn't qualify. Confusing!
Yes but given almost no one on the peninsula ever needed it. They’re a new requirement and many of us who had them are now having to order the new ones to accommodate these damn toll lanes.
I hate the toll lanes with a passion. You get charged even when there is 0 traffic. It should be free unless there’s traffic! (Or just not have a toll lane to begin with and stop punishing the poor over and over!)
The fast track on 101 is such a scam. The old HOV lanes were free during off-peak hours. Fast track is 5 AM to 8 PM. You'll see a few miles of bumbper to bumper traffic around Palo Alto while the fast track lanes are empty in the afternoon.
Old HOV lanes were 7 AM - 9 AM and 4 PM - 7 PM or something like that. So outside of those hours, everything was pretty load balanced, which makes sense. This move seems to be more about revenue maximization than reducing traffic. They haven't even completed the full stretch from SF to south bay, but once they do, it would cost about $10 to do that run. Add $5 in gas, and you are looking at $15 per trip, one-way. Tax dollars at work.
Nothing like the government rent-seeking on existing under-provisioned infrastructure instead of doing their job (adequately provisioning infrastructure).
I suspect almost everyone could get out of it by claiming to forget what setting they had it on, or that they'd flipped it but the switch didn't go all the way over, or it was sticky, etc.
A few years ago a cop pulled me over and I gave him my license and registration, the usual song and dance.
When he returned to my vehicle he looked at me closely and politely asked me (a non-trans male) if I was aware my driver's license specified that I was a woman. You could tell he was trying to walk the line between possibly offending me and alerting me to a fairly important clerical error.
I had no idea. The DMV screwed that one up somehow when I moved to that state and they granted my new license. We both had a pretty good laugh... I said, well, does that mean I can flirt my way out of this ticket? Unfortunately (or fortunately?) the answer was an amused "sorry, no."
Find it funny people are downvoting this. It's a known thing. If you have any pretty friends - you can get out of tickets very easily by just being pretty and making something up. You won't have this privilege as an unattractive person. No different than being pulled over and judged differently because of your race. Police are incredibly biased.
Most traffic violations, like parking tickets, are "strict liability": mens rea doesn't matter, if the offense was committed you're getting a ticket. Presumably this will be the same.
There's no safety aspect, so they really shouldn't be. There's a big difference between "I didn't mean to go 120 in a 65" and "I forgot to change the switch on my billing transponder to '2 people.'"
That's like saying "I thought I'd be done with my errand in 30 minutes" when you get a parking ticket for staying 35 minutes. It doesn't matter the excuse, you are getting the ticket and maybe you'll be more careful about it in the future.
There seem to be some negative comments about this, but in my opinion this is exactly how this should work.
Even better would to have one of these signs up before the enforced toll area begins, to remind drivers what they have their transponder set to, in case they "forgot" to set it properly.
Still better would be for the transponder to beep once for the 1-person setting, twice for the 2-person setting, etc., although this could get a bit annoying.
1) I drove from San Mateo to Sunnyvale daily for years pre-pandemic using the HOV lane (Took a bus, carpooled etc) . So happy to not live in the Bay Area anymore (for many reasons, but that aside) - that commute would be absolutely awful now assuming everyone goes back to the office and everything goes back to normal. It used to take 45 mins anyways on busy days with the carpool lane. I'm not convinced everything will really ever be back to normal in the bay area and full RTO is a pipe dream (also an aside), but that traffic will still be a mess because bay area.
Now everyone can pay to play and probably only buses will ever be able to use it (plus all the cheaters! - cheaters are everywhere). Note that one of the "selling points" of the express lanes was that during peak congestion, the HOV lane becomes "Bus Only" to give preference to the most effecient mode of transport (8+ passenger busses/vans iirc)
2) If you have a Clean Air Vehicle, you need to order a special CAV toll tag to avoid paying full fees. Some freeways are still free, others will give you a discount. This link has the full details
A friend of mine would use the carpool lanes on the 520 bridge in Seattle, where there's a pretty strictly enforced 3+ carpool lane (so that the bus can jump the traffic), she would routinely get pulled over for not having enough people in her car.
Once the cop looks back at the driver though, they realize there's two babies in car seats in the back. Happened to her all the time.
This happened to me. I am unfamiliar with the area, the rental company didn't mention it so I ended up receiving a ticket for not setting my transponder correctly. They even send my a picture on the ticket clearly showed me and my wife (2 people!) in the car. I ended up contesting it and they dropped it (first offense I guess). I bet they are relying on the fact that most people will not fight it. It's a stupid system.
I don't think punishing people for wanting to get somewhere is a benefit for society. Congestion is a failure of the infrastructure to efficiently meet demand, not the fault of people for simply wanting things when others also want them.
Instead of punishing individuals who already suffer by being stuck using ineffective systems that can't handle the load, a far better solution would be updating those systems or replacing them with something that can adequately handle the traffic at its peak.
The difference in the costs of the solutions you're talking about are to the order of many magnitudes.
Congestion pricing is a quick fix that is not a punishment, because everyone would be waiting in traffic anyways. Opening up the extra lanes to all would only increase wait times for all with induced demand.
But like GP said, the fix especially angers people.
It doesn't actually fix the problem. The problem is that people can't get to where they want to go without difficulty because of inadequate planning/maintenance. Congestion pricing just changes the nature of that difficulty. People will still be negatively impacted, either by additional delays caused by having to select longer routes to where they're headed (when that's even an option) or by suffering financial penalties for something that is no fault of their own.
Fixing the problem means actually updating and maintaining roadways to accommodate demand (something that should already be the norm/expectation for every road built) and doing a better job planning for increased demand in the future so that the government isn't caught off guard and can budget accordingly to handle those costs and needs quickly.
Yes, actually fixing the problem once they've screwed up costs a lot of money, and it's true that congestion pricing could help pay for that (assuming that 100% of all money collected goes to that effort and nothing else), but in the meantime drivers continue to be negatively impacted, traffic forced to alternate longer routes will waste gas, hurt the environment, cause more wear on people's vesicles, cause increased wear and congestion on those alternate roads, and the administration/overhead of congestion pricing eats into every penny you earn towards something that should have been budgeted for and paid for by our taxes in the first place.
If the question is "How best to pay for what we should have been doing already" it's so much faster, and easier to get the funds needed to properly manage/maintain public roads by collecting a very small amount of money from a very a large number of people on the promise that they will be able to drive on any public road anywhere without needless difficulty, than it is to only collect funds from a very small number of people over a much much longer period of time while also inconveniencing every driver and pushing problems onto surrounding areas.
Could using a toll to discourage people from using infrastructure that can't be efficiently scaled to larger capacity be the best fix in some instances? Maybe people would then gravitate towards less cumbersome commuting patterns.
If there's a road that needs to be updated/replaced, but for some reason cannot be, and if alternate routes to the most popular destinations already exist, I'd think most people would naturally seek them out rather than deal with delays and traffic backups caused by the congestion alone. There really isn't any need to put more hurt on people beyond that.
In a case like that the real solution would be improvements to alternate routes or the construction of new and efficient routes in areas where construction can take place to attract people away from the congested road that can't be improved on. The priority should always be to try to make things easier for people to move where they want to go, not to make it more inconvenient and painful for them when they do it.
I think most people would rather not deal with excessive traffic and crowded roads and wouldn't if given the choice. Many just don't really get much choice in the commuting patterns they have. If your job requires you to be somewhere at a specific time, you're going to go. If you have to pick up your kid at a specific place and time you'll be there. Most of us are already trying to optimize for less traffic and travel time. Those of us with limited options to do that suffer enough as it is.
A couple cities I've been in with lots of HOV lanes seem to be at the limits of what expressway exits and the connecting roads can handle. Building more expressways doesn't help, the exits get backed up. It turns into quite a mess.
I guess I was thinking even longer term. Maybe people will demand/gravitate towards areas that are not so car dependent. It does seem sub-optimal that we made a world for ourselves that expects pretty much each and every adult to own something as expensive and dangerous as a car just to get by.
I don't know that building more roads is the best long term answer.
That's fair, creating better options for people doesn't have to be limited to roads. It can include public transportation and making it possible for people to walk/bike where they need to go. As long as you make things easier on people they'll be happy with whatever.
I was skeptical that public transportation or walking/biking could ever be preferable to driving a car, but I've seen it working in other countries (as long as the trains are running, I prefer them to get around in Tokyo) and even here I've seen it work in very limited spaces (mostly campuses). It can work, but It's harder to make those options attractive in places that weren't designed for/around them. It's something new developments should absolutely consider.
We could also help ease congestion though other means too. Telecommuting, more flexible work schedules, and on-site child care could help a lot, but are hard to put into place since that falls on companies to offer them.
Certainly, we should upgrade our infrastructure to improve capacity. Due to induced demand, there will still be traffic at peak times. Congestion pricing can shape demand to improve utilization and reduce travel times, which improves the ROI of those investments.
I think most people would rather not deal with excessive traffic and crowded roads and wouldn't if given the choice. Many just don't really get much choice in the commuting patterns they have. If your job requires you to be somewhere at a specific time, you're going to go. If you have to pick up your kid at a specific place and time you'll be there. Most of us are already constantly trying to optimize for less traffic and travel time. Those of us with limited options to do that suffer enough as it is. Adding more pain to those with few, if any, other options isn't helping.
Better to update existing roads, improve alternate routes, and if needed build new roads to attract people away from over-crowded ones (peak times or not). Give people better alternatives and I promise they'll take them. We're now routinely using satellites to try to find ways to avoid traffic congestion. We all want it so badly we're resorting to space computers for help! This clearly isn't something you have beat people with a stick to do and it does no good to punish the people who don't have better alternatives available. We really can just put away the stick.
I think it bothers people when they're not getting to choose when or where they drive, which is much of the time (commute, taking kids to school, that kind of thing). It feels like being punished for decisions other people made.
We have had these same transponders in the Los Angeles area for years and years but I do not think they do this with the number - I always thought it seemed odd that there was almost no accountability to cheating the system.
Also - does the CHP even have time to enforce this? At least where I live they are plenty busy with more pressing matters. But maybe on the Peninsula they have more time.
As someone who grewup in the Bay Area and now lives in Los Angeles I thought it was funny when she talked about how to tell the invaders (based on how they say either "101" or "the 101"). The better test for this (in my opinion) is if someone says they live / work in "the valley" or the peninsula. If someone says "the 101" that just means they are from socal vs somewhere else. It always cracks me up when someone tries to humblebrag by saying "oh me? I live in The Valley" because the OG locals are internally rolling their eyes.
It always cracks me up when someone mentions "the 101" and then someone else would immediately respond "found the Southern Californian!" I thought this phrasing of "invaders" was a real gem.
Yea that was funny - the reason socal people say "the" before freeways is that for a long time many of them were officially labeled things like "the San Diego Freeway" (along with a number). So it just fell into place after that.
By making cheating public, but without the public being able to punish defectors, you might actually increase the number of people who cheat, especially if they don't see them getting caught. Sometimes you don't want to give up ambiguity.
I can't make heads or tails of why fasttrack has those messages "Tolling Begins Spring 2021", "Tolling Begins Spring 2022". Is this is a deliberately misleading message to get people to think that the system is not fully deployed and that the public is getting a courtesy heads up to start watching their lanes soon because they will be charged once the tolling actually begins? The tolling has already begun, why do they bother displaying these messages?
I recently rented a vehicle on Turo in CA for three days and racked up maybe three toll charges - even though I followed the law and did my best to avoid HOV lanes when I didn't have enough occupants.
I was greeted the following month with a *$320* ticket. The fees themselves totalled to no more than $12 which I would've been totally okay paying, but the overage fee for non-payment (which how was I supposed to know the owner wasn't watching the records for his vehicle - per Turo rules?) were over *$100 per charge*. To call this predatory is an understatement. Also, a word of warning to anyone using Turo, they usually indicate that "the driver is liable for all toll charges while driving the vehicle" which can screw you if you don't confirm in writing with the owner if they're watching toll records. Always settle via the Turo app, many owners will try to settle with you directly and try to force you to pay the full fee. Fortunately, I was able to get slightly less ripped off and pay 40% of the charge by settling through the Turo app.
I love CA and a lot of my friends live there, but goodness are they chalking up reasons for me to never live there again.
but goodness are they chalking up reasons for me to never live in there again
California doesn't set Turo's toll policies, and many states have implemented automated tolling, so your list of states to live in in going to get smaller and smaller.
I think the biggest problem with automated tolling is that every state has their own independent system -- the federal government should enforce one standard, so I can use my toll reader on any toll road in the country.
Oh hey, I was looking to see if there was a multi-state toll tag and it sounds like the US government did pass a law requiring interoperability, but this linked website doesn't appear to sell this "nationalpass", so I don't know what happened to the law:
In 2012, Congress passed the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) to ease the burden of tolled interstate travel by providing motorists the convenience of a single toll tag and account.
Ah yes, MAP-21. It passed a requirement that all electronic toll systems become interoperable by 2016, but without any penalty for failure or money inducements to succeed, so nothing happened.
Well, that's not quite true. There are a couple of major consortia of electronic toll systems in the US. The largest consortium is the E-ZPass system, which started out with a cooperation in the NYC area and grew to encompass basically everything from Illinois to Virginia to Maine by the time MAP-21 passed. Since it was the largest, in terms of number of systems implemented, their position was more or less that everyone would implement compatibility with E-ZPass. North Carolina, Minnesota, Florida (and I believe Kentucky) added compatibility to E-ZPass post-2012.
The other three consortia are California (interoperable with no one else, because California I guess), the Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas group, and the Georgia/North Carolina/Florida interoperability region (which will be fully subsumed by E-ZPass once Georgia's system becomes interoperable, apparently later this year). There's still a couple of systems that interoperate with nobody else as well.
The biggest problem with automated tolling is there is no law restricting how rental companies can use those tolls against you. I don't know the current state of things, but there used to be this thing where rental companies would charge you say a $30 convenience fee simply for passing on a $3 toll charge. The consent-fiction was to bring your own toll transponder and cross your fingers it worked or avoid toll roads or whatever.
This of course is the shape of much corruption in the US - the government mandates some thing but with no restrictions on its abuse, and then private companies leverage that mandate to screw you (see also: DL/SSN numbers). What needs to happen is any such mandates need to be designed as complete systems that regulate all constructive behavior, rather than mere partial solutions that complexity gets built on top of.
I don't think interstate highways should be tolled, period. They were paid for decades ago, and maintenance should be covered by the existing gas tax. I am not opposed to convenience highways in metro areas being tolled, as long as there is a non-toll option that is reasonably similar in non-rush hour times. As it stands the major Chicago to New York and New York to DC routes are tolls almost the entire way. The nation paid for those routes, and now pays to use them as well.
> As it stands the major Chicago to New York and New York to DC routes are tolls almost the entire way. The nation paid for those routes, and now pays to use them as well.
Actually, no, the nation did not pay for those. The NJ, PA, OH, IN, and IL toll roads you're talking about were built with state-issued bonds, not Interstate money, because they're older than the Interstate laws. They got Interstate numbers later, purely as a matter of convenience for travelers trying to get from A to B. The only federally-funded Interstate that I know of that is allowed to charge tolls is the WV Turnpike, and that only because it was so horrifically expensive to build and yet was so valuable to the nation as an artery.
The Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike is another such road (I-95 now), but tolls were removed when I-295 bypassing the area was built. There are other state-built toll roads in greater Richmond that continue to be tolled. The Virginia Beach Expressway was tolled until its initial bonds were paid off. On both roads, you can still fairly easily see where the booths were.
It should definitely be tolled, but for a different reason. The only effective way to control congestion is to put a price on it, so the tolls should kick in iff there is heavy traffic.
I'm not sure that's true, just providing alternative transportation doesn't by itself control congestion-- London has good alternative transportation options, but also has a £15 congestion charge (i.e. toll) to limit traffic during peak hours.
If the roads are free to use and not congested, many people will use them until the cost or inconvenience of using the road is greater than the alternative transportation. (that's not true of everyone, of course, some will use alternative transportation even at greater cost or inconvenience)
The other option is reduce the entrances/exits in metro areas so that most traffic on metro interstates is no longer traffic that is going from one area of the metro to another area.
The metro areas should be responsible for handling intra-metro traffic, and that traffic should stay away from interstates.
> every state has their own independent system -- the federal government should enforce one standard, so I can use my toll reader on any toll road in the country.
And I have a transponder for the Seattle area that I use about 3-5 times a year. I don't live in Washington but I do visit regularly. It doesn't work anywhere else but when I need it, I need it. A nationwide standard really is needed.
Back in the day Turo was mostly people with somewhat interesting cars who wanted to share them, and rental agencies had nothing interesting, and the pricing was reasonable.
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Now a $60 a day car can come out to more than a $100 a day car because of extended insurance for specific models, Turo fees, weird discount structures, massive deposits (One $70 a day car had an $700 deposit).
And there's no way to actually account for that in searching, the estimated price never includes any of this. So you're left to randomly click around and "guess" which cars don't all belong to the same guy tacking on a massive deposit, or asking for some money on the side.
It all just feels incredibly sleazy, and wreaks of Turo's model essentially failing since private owners care more about their cars than an agency, and they likely had to deal with a ton more claims.
There are also a ton of deeply unsafe cars on there now, especially older non-enthusiast cars. Rental agencies might not be the best about safety, but they also won't keep a 100k mile structurally rusted out econobox laying around...
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I just went through that last week and decided to go with Sixt. I got a rental "A5 or similar" (convertible 4 series was the option I took at the counter), and for 12 dollars a day I get unlimited tolls in CA.
>Back in the day Turo was mostly people with somewhat interesting cars who wanted to share them, and rental agencies had nothing interesting, and the pricing was reasonable.
>Now a $60 a day car can come out to more than a $100 a day car because of extended insurance for specific models, Turo fees, weird discount structures, massive deposits
This honestly feels like the story of every gig economy service out there (Airbnb, Turo, etc). They were unique and interesting and well worth the cost versus traditional competitors at one point. Now they're at the point where I'm back to cross-shopping the traditional options (hotels / car agencies / etc) first.
I used Turo for the first time on a trip to Salt Lake City recently to go skiing. I wanted something with 4WD in case it snowed. Turo was hundreds of dollars cheaper than any of the airport rentals.
It seemed like most of the rentals there were people running their own rental companies (fleets of 4 or 5 cars). It worked really well for us.
Also great for Colorado ski trips when the Traction Law is in effect. Normal rental agencies will never guarantee a compliant reservation (unless you spend triple to rent a vehicle class you can reasonably expect to comply) but the filters on Turo make it simple. The insurance situation is a little dicey though; apparently only a handful of insurance policies (thru insurance agencies and credit card benefits) cover P2P rentals, maybe like 25% of them or so.
100k miles is ‘deeply unsafe’? You can’t evaluate structural rust in a photo, so if you’re deciding safety based on mileage you have a very unreal sense of safe vs unsafe.
100k miles doesn't make it unsafe, the rust does. 100k miles is mentioned because a 50k mile car is less likely to have potential critical rust, and rental companies are selling cars at 50k miles on average.
Of course now this is the part where you say 50k mile cars can have rust too! They sure can, but where is rust worse, at 50k miles or after an additional 50k miles?
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It's not just rust either, as miles tick up there's plenty of maintenance that's supposed to be done that private renters making a buck won't.
Your rental agency isn't going to pick up a high milage 3 series that's one good highway trip away from shredding its serpentine belt because no one ever fixed a single oil leak it had...
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They're also not going to do what my Turo renter did in Miami:
Give you a car with a brake light and clear metal on metal sounds and tell you "oh, that's ok, the sensor is just broken"
I've never had an unsafe car persay, but when working with a small budget you'll end up with a high-mileage 2010 Toyota Corolla. (Turo says "Cars that have more than 130,000 mi/200,000 km may remain listed as long as they’re in excellent condition") [1]
What I've noticed on Turo is now there's a large mix of 'big' players: Unregulated car rental biz that have 10+ beaters of Echos/Sparks/Minis/Focus, or, a buy-here/pay-here used car dealership that's renting out everything on the lot.
In SoCal as long as you have a fastrack account associated with the vehicle/license plate even if you have no transponder your account still gets charged the normal fee + a small additional courtesy fee. I believe the additional fee might be 6$ which does not seem ridiculous (to me at least).
To me this more just sounds like the owner of that vehicle is an idiot and never registered the plate with fastrack.
The funniest express lane sign I've seen is at the entrance to northbound 101 from San Antonio Road in Mountain View. When I drove by, it read (paraphrased) "Toll to Embarcadero: $1.30".
Embarcadero Road (and Oregon Expressway) is the very next exit. The San Antonio entrance puts you directly onto the exit-only lane for Embarcadero/Oregon. This lane is 1.2 miles from entrance to exit, and it's rarely backed up even if the rest of the freeway is, as there is no stoplight after you get off the freeway.
So most rational drivers making that short trip just stay in the exit-only lane.
But now the sign tells me I can use the express lane for $1.30! What a deal. In the space of 1.2 miles, I can cut across four lanes of traffic to get to the express lane, and then cut back across four lanes again to barely make the exit.
This isn't one of those big overhead signs above the express lanes, it's a little sign at eye level to the right of the onramp, before you get onto the freeway. It's only visible to drivers entering the freeway from San Antonio.
That's what made it so funny: it listed the one toll trip you would never take from there.
I think I recall that "Embarcadero" was in the display and not painted on, so they could fix it to give a more practical destination.
"How does the system know what to charge you? Well, you either have an old-style toll transponder that always bills you as a solo driver, or you have a new-style transponder with a 1/2/3+ switch that tells the road how to handle you. "
I have two "old-style" transponders with a 1/2/3+ switch, and one "new-style" passive RFID tag/sticker that has no switch, so I have no idea how they are determining what to charge me. Perhaps they are using AI/camera hardware to count the occupants now.
Or maybe you'll escape enforcement until they deprecate the current system and mandate the new-style transponder as part of your next vehicle registration renewal.
In general, there is little upside to being an early adopter of systems your creditors seem excited about — for examples, see: smart meters, EzPass lanes, facial recognition for taxpayer identity verification, etc. I prefer to stick with existing systems as long as possible...
It’s incredible the lengths to which the US will go to duct tape together their 1950’s era, individual-rider transportation system. The solution is mass transit, but this offends the entrenched industries (auto companies and adjacent) that control the government so you get nonsense like this.
California is a confusing place to drive. Trying to find out how to pay tolls online was confusing. One bridge had a "stop and pay tolls!" sign, but no one was stopping, and I found out later they issue the toll online. This was all mostly in the Bay area on a recent visit.
You can also add your license plate number to your Fastrak account so if you don't have the transponder in your car it'll just charge back to your account via the plate. Obviously doesn't work if you want to carpool.
Yes. You need a CAV tag. I started applying for one and then I noticed they wanted to pre-charge my credit card $25. I may not use an HOV lane for months and yet they want to take my money now for some reason.
As someone who's never heard of FasTrack before, this all sounds a little dystopian. In my state, we don't have toll roads, but our roads are pretty awful.
One thing I love about driving in America is that (in a sense) everyone is equal. Whether you drive a brand new Ferrari or a 1990 Toyota, you still wait in the same traffic. HOV/carpool lanes are an understandable conceit to incentivize good behaviors, but the idea that you can pay money to skip traffic just feels awful to me.
Those transponders are cool though. I have a different one for my electric car with a CAV sticker which lets me use some of the SoCal lanes alone.
>the idea that you can pay money to skip traffic just feels awful to me.
This is no different from any toll road except the toll road and the free road are right next to each other and are therefore perfect substitutes with the only difference being the amount of traffic on each.
Yeah, toll roads don't feel right either. Of course, it also didn't feel right to buy a PHEV with carpool stickers, but I did it when my carpool partner took leave. Free charging at work was nice too (thanks Mark), although I was happier when I could take Caltrain.
> One thing I love about driving in America is that (in a sense) everyone is equal. Whether you drive a brand new Ferrari or a 1990 Toyota, you still wait in the same traffic.
Sorry - just speaking about my own experience and implying that an important “American value” to me is classlessness, which seems to erode over time. Thanks for calling me out on that. I don’t think this is different anywhere in the world.
In Buenos Aires, the northern, suburban, tolled highways have a non-tolled two-lane alternative that go side by side. Going west or south - some of them have a speedbump-filled alternative street, others don't even have that.
They don't ask which brand of car you're driving, but there's a really high correlation between income level and living area - northern parts being the richest.
I've heard (could be rumor) that the "high speed highways" in Japan are toll roads with tolls so high basically nobody uses them. Maybe that's an example?
Japan's expressways are privatized and tolled per-kilometer. They are competing with long-distance train lines, so the toll is in the same ballpark as a train ticket (about 13000 yen or $110 from Tokyo to Osaka).
The privatization of the expressways was pretty much enabled by the viability of the rail networks, which are also mostly privatized, mostly profitable, and extremely well-built.
>but the idea that you can pay money to skip traffic just feels awful to me.
Plenty of places in the US have whole highways that require payment to use. Same for most tunnels and bridges that you can go around but it takes significantly longer.
Hahaha, this is the best thing I've read all day. That's fantastic. I knew there would be a way for rich people to get around it. (Like when my friend got around COVID restrictions travelling to Mexico by just taking his dad's plane [since lots of the restrictions applied only to passenger jets due to transmission risk].)
Or like a VC I once spoke with listening to a rideshare pitch: “I’m not your target market. I drive alone in my Bentley in the carpool lane. I don’t care if I get a $400 ticket.”
In a very significant way, this is not true. Everyone is paying with their time and losing it irreparably to a wasteful process, yes, but the quality of that time varies enormously with how much you spend. On the low end, you're sitting in an old car with significant road noise, a mushy clutch on your manual transmission, crappy speakers to listen to your podcasts via cassette adapter. weak/no air conditioning, windows that let most of the light through, and you're sitting low because your cheap 1990s car wasn't built for highway warfare. At the other end of the spectrum, you're sitting on an air-conditioned leather seat in a brand-new electric SUV with tint so dark that for some reason it is only legal in SUVs, taking calls with a good microphone array and excellent speakers; you're also sitting high up in a vehicle equipped for modern highway warfare, but you barely even notice because your car's radar/lidar is doing most of the spacing and lane-keeping for you anyway.
So, yes, everyone's sitting around waiting, but it's the difference between sitting at home in your living room and sitting in the DMV.
I guess I just like the idea that whether or not you have a nice car/experience, it still takes just as long to get there. Not advocating anything - I just appreciate the abstract equalizer of the road.
Well, one practical response to this is that the toll lanes do not really cause other lanes to be slower (than what it was before), even though it feels like some group is being allowed to bypass everyone else.
In the sense that -- suppose that you have a 4 lane highway. Adding a 5th lane will actually not help much to increase the capacity of the highway if it is traffic-bottlenecked. For certain traffic volumes and lane configurations, adding lanes doesn't increase throughput.
So having a toll lane basically just helps to generate revenue from people who are willing to pay (and allow those who are willing to pay to drive slightly faster past traffic), while not significantly slowing down most other people (who already experienced congestion in certain stretches of highway before this).
Now, whether this feels fair and is a good idea is a different question (and clearly generates a lot of opinions).
There is a highway near Washington DC (I-66) that has dual-rate HOV lanes like this. During peak rush hour times, the lanes are free to vehicles with 2+ people, but solo drivers can also opt to pay to use them.
They wanted to ensure that the HOV lanes move fast enough that the people who are carpooling will actually be rewarded for doing so. This meant that there had to be a dynamic toll for solo drivers.
Imagine the outrage when on a particularly busy day, this dynamic toll exceeded $20 for a ten-mile journey. The reality is plenty of people were cheating and using the HOV lanes as solo drivers, and now the tolling mechanism means they can no longer get away with it.
Who the hell wants to open up their phone and futz around with an app or the browser when someone else gets in the car? Plus you have to open it up to check the current setting. The physical switch is better.
As much as the DC metro area is a hellscape their auction style access to HOV lanes is probably the most straightforward.
It’s nice in that you know how fucked you are based on the price. I remember passing through once and one section had like a $38 toll, I just got off the highway and grabbed a burger.
Ough, this touches a nerve. The Fastrak system is atrocious and I have been battling it for years. Let me count the ways:
- They took my CC number and just kept replenishing $25 every so often even though it had a big balance already. Thankfully my card expired so now I'm sloooowly (don't drive much anymore) working my way through the $100+ credit on my account.
- It is so hard to check and contest charges. I had to sent in my complaint with snail mail and IIRC it took a month before I got a reply back that requested information that I already wrote in the first letter doesn't apply. I gave up at this point.
- There is _NO_ way to check the transponder short of just using it and waiting a week for the event to show up on the bill. My windshield was apparently blocking radio transmissions (I know why, don't tell me) and experimenting with a different location has a crazy long cycle time due to the above. There days I guess I could do it with a car driving behind me reading what the sign say, but that only works when there isn't much traffic.
That's awful but is pretty much confirming my experience. At the revenue level they have, you'd assume they could do better, but presumably having a monopoly means they don't have to care.
> That's awful but is pretty much confirming my experience. At the revenue level they have, you'd assume they could do better, but presumably having a monopoly means they don't have to care
FasTrak is a monopoly operated by a private, for-profit firm, accountable to it's owners. As long as complaints don't get to the body that oversees them and which is politically accountable to the public, they aren't going to try to do better, because that has a cost and reduces profits.
Great idea honestly. I really like the feature where I can register my car to my account (in case I do not have my transponder) vs the old way where you just got charged a massive penalty fee.
But using someone elses address is a huge security problem
What FasTrak provider is this? They're different in different regions. Down here in SoCal Orange county has their own system, San Diego, Riverside, LA, you name it. They're all required by state law to use interoperable transponders but that's where it ends.
In the northeast we have E-ZPass which is equally evil.
- They too have a stupidly weird replenishment algorithm where it takes what feels like weeks to adjust. Then out of nowhere, it will increase many times even if you only increased travel temporarily. It went from maintaining a $26 balance to $180 which will take forever to use.
- "It is so hard to check and contest charges." - We used to have a business with two delivery vans with E-ZPass. We received a very high bill and it was full of "toll violation" charges which were 2 or 3 dollars that accompanied nearly every toll, some with two violations. I called them to inquire what these violation were and they flat out told me "we dont know." I forget the details but we wound up having to pay though the charges never appeared again. I feel like they robbed us using a computer glitch.
- "There is _NO_ way to check the transponder" - Yup. This is really frustrating because Ive gone on trips where the vehicle was supposedly on the account but the tag wasn't registering at the NJ tolls on I95 during a road trip. So I got a bunch of unpaid toll violations I had to manually resolve through their awful web portal. I then check the account and find the vehicle was not on the account - huh? I am sure I added it. Who knows...
It's a symptom of contracting everything out to the lowest bidder.
In Washington State who has the "Good to Go" system. Its deployment has been full of quirks, my favorite of which was that if your balance ever went negative (say you had it set up to replenish at $5 but got a $10 toll) the system would refuse to charge you (even when you had a payment method on file or went to their website) and you had to call in and talk to a human to fix it.
Whoever the new provider is (I think there was a lot of pushback on the initial implementation) is far better.
They introduced "Pay as You Go" (direct tolling) so you don't need to hold a balance anymore. You'll basically just have a negative balance until they charge your card twice a month. Has surprisingly actually worked for me, and confirms that accounts can go negative now. I can choose to add funds or just wait for the charge to go through.
Does that not work pretty much the same everywhere? On the rare occasion that I drive across the SR520 bridge across Lake Washington, they have no problem recognizing my Oregon plate and sending me a bill. Same when I drove through the Bay Area. Took them a couple weeks.
It does work pretty much everywhere, the catch is that some places will only bill you the toll amount. Other places will bill the toll plus a small convenience fee. Others will bill the toll and a huge penalty on top. Are you confident which jurisdiction you are traveling though? Has it changed since the last time you visited?
That's harsh. Do they have tollbooths for visitors, then? Seems like the places I've been on the west coast with toll roads have ditched the actual toll booths and just use license plate recognition for billing cars without a pass. No penalty, but you get a discount if you have a pass.
First, they definitely don't contract to the lowest bidder.
Second, every tolling system is different. Sometimes the accounting (often called the back office system) is contracted out, sometimes it is performed in-house by the tolling agency.
Source: I work for one of the better quality contractors.
God forbid we let the state hire a few local SWEs (Seattle doesn't have any of those) to write and maintain a system instead of paying $30M every few years plus a cut of tolls to whatever Texas contractor gave the most perks to a WSDOT exec.
I don't know anything about that particular case, and I would have agreed with you about the "few local SWEs", until I saw this side of the business. You would be floored by the amount of work and hoops that you have to jump through, and that's well before the SLAs and KPIs. Take a wild guess how much it costs to hoist, populate, and maintain a gantry with the associated sensors, cameras, etc. That's in the price tag, too. The SWEs aren't doing that work! The SWEs definitely aren't driving the test vehicles at the test track.
There's a good reason that the systems themselves cost so much money. Heck, it costs an arm and a leg just for the routine maintenance permits! The CI/CD, security, data persistence, data provenance, latency, and agency interop requirements are absolutely insane. Trust me, it's more than just a few SWE can handle.
Lastly, it's definitely not about any under-the-table dealings. There's just a huge amount of work! When deciding to whom to award the contract, they do background checks on key company people, look at past contracts, etc.
Here around Denver, we have the ExpressToll system, which started out as the electronic billing system for E-470 (the toll-only highway that runs around the eastern Denver metro area), but then got adapted to the I-25 express lanes, and then to HOT lanes carved out of existing freeways (US-36 and northern I-25 first, then C-470, I-70 through part of the mountains, and more coming soon). They use either a basic RFID sticker that always charges the toll, or a switchable pass with two positions. One bad thing: "high occupancy," for which you can use the "free" position on the switch, requires 3 occupants now, not just 2.
The other toll-only highway, the Northwest Parkway, has its own pass system (GO PASS), but ExpressToll is compatible with it as well.
I have the sticker for my car; it's always seemed to work OK for me.
It depends on the issuing authority. I never had problems with excessive billing from the Thruway authority while mostly using it for NYC area tolls.
I had a motorcycle EZpass die after four years and I didn't know about it for nearly a year because many of the NJ barriers don't give feedback on the status. Looking back through the records I could see that I rarely got billed from a license plate read so I optimized my lane positioning.
I am not related to them in any way but I would recommend you to use privacy.com to control charges against your cards for situations like this. Capitol One has a service called 'Eno' and Citi has 'virtual account numbers' if you have either of those services they can also help you control charges in a much more granular way than using a regular credit card. Hope this comment helps someone like these services help me.
It was nice that the intermediate version beeped when getting pinged; the new flex version (with number of riders switch) is silent again. Maybe it's time to hack a tone into it.
Ah, that's interesting. I've never heard a beep from any of my transponders, including crossing bridges. Is yours the "gumstick" one? (Thin rectangular one). A beep would be a step in the right direction (but doesn't solve my other grievances).
FasTrak has actually been surprisingly nice for me.
I love the ability to add cars by license plate to an account, and being able to specify exactly when coverage starts and ends down to minute precision. Renting a car? You can add the plate to your account for just the period you're renting so you don't pay the rental company fees.
This reminds me, the tolling system for the SF bay bridges are even worse... for some resaon you have a narrow band of time to pay your toll and the payment options are super limited. I got Fastrak because of how big a PITA it was and I don't even live there (though it's also in use here in socal)
Aaah yes. A while back I rented a car in England, did a bunch of driving, and on my way back to the airport crossed the Dartford Bridge in the dark. For some reason you have 24 hours to pay it then it steadily becomes more and more impossible. I wasn't able to get online to pay it and flew out in the morning. Que a year of increasingly ridiculous demand letters from whoever runs that tolling system. They escalated to sending me bills in the US with short windows to pay which of course arrived after their demand window closed. So I never paid it.
We have something like that in New York State for me it is trouble free. I used to waste time stacked up in toll plazas around Albany but with EZ Pass I drive right through and don't feel like part of the problem.
I bought a new car and I couldn't figure out if my license plate has the digit '0' or the letter 'O', so I added both versions to my FasTrak to check which license plate would get charged. It took 4 days after crossing the toll to finally see the charge on my account.
I was about to say "there is no letter O, only number 0" but Wikipedia [0] mentions that California does have both. You can deduce which character it is based on position:
> California currently only uses I, O, and Q in between two other letters, for example "1AQA000".[citation needed]
Not always. Particularly if you're driving outside of your provider's service area, it may take as long as a week for a charge to show up. I have a long commute right now and I sometimes don't see charges for days.
I know its easier said than done, but gosh this is some absurd complexity for dealing with a problem of congestion, wouldn't it just be cheaper/safer/simpler/eco-friendly to offer better+faster public transport in the long run ?
These kinda solutions just feel like band-aids on top of band-aids when what is really needed are sutures(stitches) ?
I'm curious though, are there startups trying to solve this problem of public transport ? Just like the many startups focused on trying to perfect self-driving cars.
Building better+faster public transport brings orders of magnitude of absurd complexity, compared to implementing something like this. I do agree that public transit solves many of these problems in the long run, and I hope we get there some day.
He basically admitted to me that it's based on the honor system, he has no real way to enforce that the number is correct unless it's a convertible with the top down.
> Southern California has it too, but they call it "the" 101
I moved here 26 years ago but I still call it "the 101" (but I call all the other freeways by just their number, except the 5 because we have that in SoCal too). So yeah, I guess you can use it to detect I learned to drive in LA, but I've lived more than 1/2 my life here, so if I'm an invader, I'm definitely playing the long con!