Posted on 12/04/2017 9:20:02 AM PST by Hojczyk
WASHINGTON — Drivers on eastbound Interstate 66 saw tolls fluctuate frantically and top out at almost $35 during the Monday morning commute, the first with dynamic tolling on the highway.
Rush-hour tolling began at 5:30 a.m. and early morning drivers saw tolls at around $3.50. Within an hour, the tolls had risen to $10 and eventually reached $34.50 at the height of rush-hour. By 9 a.m., prices were back down to below $10, said WTOP’s traffic reporter Dave Dildine, who spent the morning driving on I-66 to report the latest conditions.
“It’s going to take some time for us to kind of get everything smoothed out and see what those toll prices are going to be consistently,” Jenni McCord with the Virginia Department of Transportation told WTOP on Monday.
Traffic moved smoothly throughout the morning and WTOP’s traffic center reported that the number of drivers on I-66 declined compared to typical Monday morning volume.
“There were no delays inside the Beltway — that’s the point of congestion pricing — to keep the carpools and paying solo drivers moving. As demand goes up, the price does too,” said WTOP’s traffic reporter Dave Dildine.
The George Washington Parkway absorbed the brunt of the traffic, with Virginia Route 123 and U.S. 50 picking up extra drivers as well. A WTOP listener reported that getting onto Interstate 495 south in Fairfax County was “a mess” during the rush hour.
(Excerpt) Read more at wtop.com ...
I wonder if I66 has a toll booth, with a human being able to collect cash for the toll? I’ve heard they have done away with human being toll collectors in many places.
“Basic economics. Supply/demand I will supply you a fast lane and the price depends on how many bidders there are.”
They should have made that argument BEFORE they asked the taxpayers to pay for these roads in the first place. As it stands, we paid for them, we own them, we should be able to use them without getting gouged by wasteful politicians who are greedy for another way to plug their budget gaps.
What a racket.
Leave the house earlier.
they take pictures of your vehicle license plate and then send you a bill. Denver area there are a couple places the toll authority snags you even when your out of the express lane.
Slick Eddie Rendell wanted to turn I-80 into a toll road in Pennsylvania... what a crook!
A nice $250 fine from the State Trooper if you get caught...
Virginia driver caught using HOV lane with dummy in passenger seat
Unlike the beltway and 95 there are no free lanes. There are local roads that might have become more crowded (they were crowded before). The demand pricing can't be based on traffic because there was little traffic on it all morning. I don't know what the price was based on.
There were never any toll booths on 66, and most places that had them now have overhead readers. The only place around DC that I know about with booths is the Nice bridge and maybe the Baltimore tunnels although I have been to those for a while.
So much easier to get that old Kickback money by charging outrageous toll prices than actually building roads. No wonder politicians love toll roads.
Of course that’s what the original term highway robbery meant.
Decades ago at a block Christmas Party, a neighbor and a retired Marine Major, who had worked for the city and county re roads and other infra structure after his retirement and became a tax sucking liberal, was at the party.
He was pushing for new toll roads and bridges in our town and county, saying that was the best way to pay for them.
My normally quiet wife on issues like this, said “Hell No!”
“We and our kids when they became adults would be paying tolls forever!”
He said that would never happen. Then, my wife asked why the tolls on the Golden Gate Bridge and Oakland Bridge and other toll roads only went up. He sputtered and left the room.
A few years later, they moved and he passed on. We saw his widow, while she was visiting our area. She gave my wife a hug for shutting her loud mouth husband up, years ago.
We also found out later one of the women present at the party was on the Board of Directors for the Golden Gate Bridge.
A couple of years later, she recalled my wife’s stance and laughed. She told us that the tolls would never stop on any bridge in California. She said most people in California were too dumb to realize that reality. She was the old type of democrat. One you could get along with!
Not to worry! The highly-paid government “workers” won’t even blink at this toll. Anyway, the WDC area is surrounded by the richest several counties in the nation. Your tax dollars at work.
Unlike the beltway and 95 there are no free lanes. There are local roads that might have become more crowded (they were crowded before).
If that’s true then there is no reason for the tolls to change since there are essentially no options. I don’t get it.
Virginia driver caught using HOV lane with dummy in passenger seat.....Hell, I do that everytime my girlfriend gets in the car.
They should have made that argument BEFORE they asked the taxpayers to pay for these roads in the first place. As it stands, we paid for them, we own them, we should be able to use them without getting gouged by wasteful politicians who are greedy for another way to plug their budget gaps.
In one way I agree with you about our roads and greedy politicians, however, if you open all lanes to all drivers w/out the tolls you will have nothing but congestion with no option to get out of it. Sometimes (I need to catch a plane) I’m willing to pay to get moving. I hate the TSA also. I wish we could get rid of them but it’s not in the cards so I buy precheck so I can actually make my flight and not have to sleep in the airport.
>>>The point of the fluctuating toll lanes is to keep drivers out of them. If the price is high enough people will opt to use the free lanes no matter how crowded. You pay to keep moving at 60-65 mph.
Similar to how the information superhighway might work in a post net neutrality world. You can pay to drive in the HOT lane to get fast speeds from your ISP or you can pay the base rate and drive in the regular lanes that will at times be highly congested and slow.
They take pictures of your license plate and send the bill to your address.
I can tell you this for certain. The road will be empty this Friday at 8 or 9AM and there will be some completely arbitrary but high price.
They send you an inflated bill in the mail and if you don’t pay it, a hold is put on when it comes time to renew your driver’s license....
I don’t understand how a Toll can be charged for an Interstate road, the US taxpayer paid for the road. How can local government impose a Toll on an Interstate?
The law was changed around a decade ago. States may now authorize tolls on interstate highways.
It is a well formulated problem in game theory by the economist Brian Arthur called The El Farol Bar Problem which he discussed in a paper Inductive Reasoning and Bounded Rationality
In short, this is how you create chaos, literally. They should have seen it coming.
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