The Washington Department of Transportation opened the High Occupancy Toll (HOT) Lanes in May 2008 to give the solo driver an option, an out from the congestion that clogs State Route 167.
Craig Stone, deputy administrator of the Urban Corridors Washington State Department of Transportation, presented the program’s eight-month report card to Auburn City Council members recently.
“There are some things we are learning, and some things we’ll get better,” Stone said. “But overall, in terms of technology, driver expectations and safety, it seems to be going pretty good.”
The four-year pilot program covers the years of 2008-2012. It will be up to the state Legislature whether it continues beyond 2012.
A single HOT lane runs in each direction of State Route 167, about nine miles between Renton and Auburn. The two general-purpose lanes in each direction are toll-free and open to all vehicles.
Solo drivers pay a variable, electronically collected toll using a “Good to Go! transponder to drive in the HOT lane where there is available space. Carpools of two or more vehicles, vanpools, buses and motorcycles use the lanes Toll tree without a transponder. The lanes operate daily from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Toll rates automatically increase and decrease with the level of congestion to ensure that traffic in the lane always moves smoothly.
Among the findings in the “Eight-Month Performance Summary of SR 167 High Occupancy Toll (HOT) Lanes Pilot Project” are the following:
• More than 20,000 Good to Go! users have paid to use the HOT lanes.
• The program does not appear to have any adverse impact on safety.
• The average number of peak-hour toll transactions continues to increase
• Travel times for carpools and transit have been maintained
• There is room in the HOT lane for additional carpool vehicles, transit or toll-paying solo drivers
• And transit ridership is up nearly 25 percent from the same time period last year.
Stone said traffic volumes on SR 167 declined about 3 percent in 2008 compared to the same month in 2007. Among the possible causes he cited were the economic downturn, the price of gas and Sound Transit’s popular South Sounder train.
Traffic volumes and tolled trips dropped sharply in December probably because of the year-end storms, Stone said.
In the northbound direction the average number of toll trips during the peak hour increased 40 percent between May and November, while the number of peak hour tolled trips in the southbound lanes increased 20 percent same period, Stone said.
The report also found that the weekday northbound HOT lane provided drivers with an average time saving of 9.1 minutes during the peak hour, although the savings varied considerably. Also, the weekday southbound HOT lane provided drivers with an average time savings of 5.1 minutes during the peak hour.
Data showed that the HOT lane system is maintaining free-flow speeds at or above 45 mph at least 90 percent of the time during peak hours.
The average monthly revenue for the first six months of HOT lane operations was $25,600. Stone said as people grow more comfortable with tolling operaation and the economy improves, engineers expect revenues to gradually increase.
Some like it, some don’t.
“People who are making a long trip between Sumner and Bellevue come in and give us great reviews. The ones who don’t like it are the ones who got onto 167 and went a couple interchanges and got back off. They say, ‘You restricted me, I had to wait to get into that lane, then I had to get back out again,’ ” Stone said.
