Posted on 12/18/2014 7:02:33 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
SR-161/SR-190 are ghost roads at this hour. Not that there are many drivers on the highways to begin with—the NTTA raised tolls not too long ago.
I heard on WTOP that the 95 toll lanes may cost as much as $20 one way during rush hour, but that is a bargain since it is about 30 miles including the new 9 mile extension. People use it out of sheer desperation and the politicians are so proud of themselves that they squander the tax payers dollars and then claim to have no money for roads. Shameful.
Don't get me started. In Seattle they made 520 a toll road.
Even though it was bought and paid for many years ago by taxpayers.
Not good enough. Now it's a toll road.
I'm surprised Seattlites just sat there and didn't make much of a fuss about it.
The minimum cost from Stafford to DC will be over $8, and that will be during non-rush hour. The rush hour fares will top over $25.
I am glad I sold my company and retired several years ago. This whole HOT lane business is terrible and a scam on taxpayers.
If you are driving to Washington from points west such as Pittsburgh, Ohio, Indiana and Chicago, you are on I-70 until the city of Frederick, Maryland; at Frederick, there is a major fork in the road—if you stay on I-70 east, in 38 miles you’ll end up at the Baltimore Beltway. If you bear to the right, you end up on I-270, which runs for about 33 miles down to the Washington Beltway.
I-270 is only two lanes in each direction for the first 15 miles from Frederick, then three lanes in each direction for the next 5 miles or so, then almost the rest of the way to the Beltway it is 6 lanes in each direction; a couple of miles north of the Beltway I-270 splits—bear to the left and end up in Bethesda near the famous naval hospital (the complex is now known as Walter Reed); bear to the right and end up near the American Legion bridge leading into Northern Virginia.
I’ve traveled on this highway for close to 40 years. The traffic jams on this route occur every day and are horrendous. If you want to keep your sanity, you need to drive on this route only between 10 am-3 pm and between 8 pm and 5 am.
The powers that be in Maryland have known about the congestion problems for that long, and, because of environmental whackism in Montgomery County and the fact that Frederick County doesn’t have all that much clout in Annapolis, nothing has been done about it.
There are now three segments of HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes in the DC-Baltimore area: (1) about 10 miles of the Washington Beltway between Springfield and McLean, VA; (2) the newly opened I-95 Express lanes (which are actually reversible lanes in morning and evening rush hours, that run almost 30 miles from the Alexandria/Fairfax Co. line south beyond Aquia in Stafford Co.; and (3) on I-95 in Maryland north of Baltimore, running out from the Baltimore City line to around Joppa (south of exit 74).
These are so-called PPPs (public private partnerships), where the state contracts with a major highway builder (in Virginia, they used a company called Trans Urban, a subsidiary of the giant contracting company Fluor), which built the HOT lanes and gets most of the toll money for a period of time (I think 40 years). One gimmick they are using to get people to drive on the HOT lanes in VA is to have a higher speed limit (on the Beltway, you can go 65 in the HOT lanes, 55 in the regular lanes; the lanes are separated by pylons).
Thus the state gets bigger road capacity without a major capital outlay on their part.
When Democrats say tolls improve the flow of traffic, they aren’t talking about flow of cars/trucks, etc. They are talking about the “flow of money” - from our pockets to theirs.
They have these kinds of lanes on I-85 in Democrat/City areas in Atlanta. Yet with the “variable pricing structure” they still can’t seem to have enough money to keep the freeway lights on at night in and around the city of Atlanta.
The “HOT” segment you mention on I-95 north of Baltimore isn’t really HOT. There appear to be tolls on that no matter what.
http://www.i-95expresstolllanes.com/faq/
In Va, there is no toll if your EZPass Flex is set to HOV ON. You are supposed to have 3 or more in the car to do that but that’s basically on the Honor System.
Three lettered I roads are usually perimeters, beltways, or spur lines. Two lettered I roads are interstate, generally. Of those, odd numbered are North/South and even are East/West......Useless trivia I guess.
It improves traffic tremendously for those that can afford to pay $8-10 to use them at rush hour.
For those who can’t, traffic is 10 times worse.
They did this on I-95 in Miami
By making it cost-prohibitive for a number of the commuters....
No Dim tax scheme is ever meant to do what the author claims.
Here in Houston there was some kind of dispute between the county and state when it came to tolling our highways, and when the dust cleared, the county (I believe), changed the configuration of the US-290 freeway (very, very, crowded) expansion from being something like 8 free lanes and 4 toll lanes to 10 free lanes and 1 reversible carpool/toll lane (prior to the widening it was 6 free lanes and 1 reversible carpool/toll lane. A MAJOR victory for freedom.
Believe it or not, we have a very efficient commuter bus system in the Houston area, so keeping the reversible lanes is a good thing...it’s just that the big shots are ashamed of our commuter buses, because it’s not a train.
One other thing that we actually do right. At this point, whenever we widen a freeway, we do it as a continuous surface, from one shoulder to the other right across the center, so you can be halfway through (as in US290), or even finished, with an expansion and then change the configuration - simply by moving dividers and re-striping. Someone at TXDOT has some brains, for once.
That was last week. $1.75 now
I don’t misunderstand anything. I drive by this boondoggle twice a day. They are charging $1.75 each way. If you add the $4 tunnel toll 3 miles later that makes $5.75. The reason I said January is because of lighter volumes around Christmas.
Details, details....
Wow! I am not familiar with the story, but if the person who wrote this is wrong about Hough’s political party, that person’s level of credibility would appear to be quite low.
This is because no one is using the ICC. Tolls were justified with, “It’s to pay for the construction.”
270 is paid for by gas taxes. All tolling 270 will do is make 355 more conjected.
Goes between the DC beltway and I-70.
I don’t mind the turnpikes so much. I like 161 because I can drive from N Irving to Burleson (Lost Oak Winery) in less than an hour. That place is one of my favorite spots to unwind from the world.
Oh, yeah, they’ve opened up in both Maryland and Virginia. I though you were discussing the Virginia ones. My bad.
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