Like everyone else, I hate paying tolls, but my time is worth more than the toll to use the faster route. The C.D. Howe Institute is proposing converting the existing (and additional planned) high occupancy lanes on highways to toll lanes:
Car-pool lanes on Canadian highways should be converted to high-occupancy toll lanes to reduce congestion and generate revenue for municipalities, says a C.D. Howe Institute report released Wednesday.
High-occupancy toll lanes differ from high-occupancy vehicle lanes by allowing solo drivers to use them, but at a cost. The lanes require that individual drivers pay to use them, but vehicles carrying more than one passenger can drive on them for free.
“When you have bad congestion, the only way to maximize capacity of the highway is to restrict and manage access,” said Ben Dachis, author of the report. “You do that by charging people for that access.”
My commute into Toronto is pretty much at road speed until I get off the 407 ETR (a toll road) and get on the southbound 404 (a non-toll road with an HOV lane in each direction). That’s about the halfway point of my journey, but I’ll spend 75% of my travel time on the second half of my commute. The HOV lane is rarely full to capacity, and there are always “cheaters” who use the lane even though they’re alone in their vehicles (you can tell because they dart back into the regular lanes at the first hint of a police cruiser ahead).
In my own case, converting the HOV lanes on the 404 to toll would only save me 10-15 minutes, as the Don Valley Parkway does not have HOV lanes, but saving 20-25 minutes per commute would be quite worthwhile for me.
Nicholas,
It has been quite a while since I spent much time on the T.O. highways, especially during peak traffic, but where does the express/local section of 401 fit in on the congestion scale? When I first drove on that section (long ago), it seemed to be a fairly effective way of mitigating congestion, but I’m guessing that it hasn’t been expanded or extended to deal with current traffic volumes or sprawl.
In the early 90’s when California still had leaders running the state, the built flexibly-priced toll lanes on Hwy 91, after seeing what a failure the costly HOV lane project on I-15 turned out to be. Lanes on I-5 in Seattle that were at one time dedicated for HOV use, have since been converted to express lanes, similar to the most urban portion of 401. Unfortunately, not everybody gets it, because just in the last decade, we tied up traffic for four years in Charlotte to put in a few miles of little-used HOV lane on I-77.
Looking at your peak traffic flow, what do you think the result would be if the HOV lanes were re-purposed as truck-only express lanes?
I don’t know if you’ve ever driven or ridden in a commercial truck, but they take much longer to speed up and slow down than passenger cars or light-duty trucks, so they significantly exacerbate the “accordion” effect that is a key element of traffic congestion.
Your area is much more urban than most areas served by HOV projects down here, so I’d be curious to hear what you think after you’ve commuted a few days while imagining the trucks were segregated from the majority of vehicles on the highway.
Comment by Tom Kelley — September 1, 2011 @ 22:06
where does the express/local section of 401 fit in on the congestion scale?
The 401 is usually moving very slowly across most of the GTA during rush hour. To the west, it usually slows down in Mississauga, sometimes quite far west in Mississauga. To the east, it always bottlenecks in Ajax, where six lanes funnel down to three. That reduction in capacity echoes back until all of the highway from the Rouge River bridge is pretty much stopped. Even without accidents to snarl things up, the highway clogs for an hour or two every morning and evening.
what do you think the result would be if the HOV lanes were re-purposed as truck-only express lanes?
I’m not sure that would make enough of a difference, although I rarely (if ever) use the 401 during rush hour, now that the 407 comes far enough east to be easy to get to. On the 404/Don Valley Parkway combination, it wouldn’t make any real difference, as trucks are a tiny minority of the traffic. The 401 has a much greater proportion of trucks, so it might help there.
Comment by Nicholas — September 2, 2011 @ 08:48