![]() The Bay Area, for instance, lacks adequate housing in its two major job hubs - Silicon Valley and San Francisco - making for longer commutes from the suburbs. Traffic has been exacerbated by the imbalance of jobs and housing in some areas, said John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in San Francisco. The rule was made about a decade ago after California legislators wanted to allow solo drivers of electric vehicles to use the carpool lanes.Īs electric vehicles have grown in popularity, carpool lanes across the state have become more clogged, said Joe Rouse, chief of Caltrans’ Office of System Operations. Department of Transportation, which was used to convert 11 miles of carpool lanes on the 110 Freeway and 14 miles on the 10 Freeway into price-managed express lanes, Metro spokesman Rick Jager said.Īccording to the OCTA, 75% of carpool lanes in Orange County are congested during rush hour and the lanes fail to meet federal standards mandating that vehicles move at a minimum of 45 mph 90% of the time in peak hours. Since then, it has become more difficult to get approval on projects that don’t reduce greenhouse gases, said John Standiford of the Riverside County Transportation Commission.Ībout a decade ago, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or Metro, received a $210-million congestion-reduction demonstration grant from the U.S. Gavin Newsom recently issued an executive order to spend money on projects that reverse the effects of greenhouse gas emissions associated with transportation. State and federal goals to reduce the effects of climate change have contributed to the explosion of toll lane projects across California. The decrease in traffic would correspond with a 9% increase in transit ridership, a 7% increase in biking and a 7% increase in walking inside the zone, according to the study. of Governments, a $4 fee to drive into a 4.3-square-mile area of West Los Angeles during weekday rush hour could almost immediately reduce traffic delays and miles driven there by more than 20%. “People who study congestion have known for a long time that the only thing is dynamic pricing.”Īccording to a recent study by the Southern California Assn. “What happens on the 405 every day is what happens at Best Buy and Target on Black Friday,” he said. Michael Manville, an associate professor of urban planning at UCLA, said those who can afford to pay the fees are able to avoid congestion for a reliable daily commute, while presumably lessening traffic for those who don’t pay and use the general lanes, he said. They bring needed revenue for new transportation projects while also putting a higher price tag on driving solo. But there is increasing consensus that high-occupancy toll lanes - which reserve certain parts of freeways to carpools and solo drivers paying tolls - are a key solution.
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