Express Lanes: Do You Use Them?

Officials overseeing the area’s highly touted new Beltway Express Lanes recently increased the speed limit from 55 to 65 mph, but is that enough to make you start using them?

Are more of these toll lanes the solution to ease traffic congestion? Express lanes are currently under construction for I-95 and should be completed in 2015. What about a proposal for these toll lanes on I-66?

While E-Z Pass adoption is rising, more than half of Beltway riders don’t have them and so can’t travel on the special lanes.

Some Patch readers say the High Occupancy Toll, or HOT, lanes are too expensive.

“…These so-called Lexus Lanes are an economic failure, they simply are not being used enough and that is because they cost too much,” commented  Patch reader Kevin Shaw. He says the cost for him is usually over $4, which for his commute averages about $1 per minute.

Joseph M. lamented the lack of transparency in the decision-making process to raise the speed limit: “Will the state receive any additional payments? Who knows?? -- because it's all 'confidential' as part of the private-public partnership.”

And reader RJ offered that no drivers actually follow the speed limit anyway: “I doubt anyone has even driven under 65mph on it since it opened. Almost everyone is going 70-75mph.”

The Express Lanes opened last November with a dynamic tolling system based on demand, time of day and other factors. Commuters can pay via EZ-Pass to use the express lanes to avoid the congestion of the mainline Beltway lanes. Carpools of three or more people may use the lanes free with an EZ-Pass Flex. 

In the first quarter of 2013, the Virginia Department of Transportation and Transurban, which run the lanes in a public-private partnership, reported nearly $2.5 million in revenue and more than 26,000 average daily trips on weekdays. 

That’s a big improvement from the project’s financial rocky start. In the first six weeks of its operation, the lanes reportedly lost $11 million.

Not every locality is as fortunate.

Houston's I-45, Atlanta's I-85, Seattle's SR-167 and U.S. 59 express lanes are all suffering fiscally. 

Do you think express lanes will help alleviate the area's congestion and is the cost worth a time-saving commute?