HOVR Lanes and Why We Should All Vote NO on Regional Measure 3

By Spencer Ahrens and Eva Markiewicz

Regional Measure 3 — $4.5 billion in Bay Area toll increases to fund efforts aimed to reduce traffic congestion — has a lot of great transit projects in it, but:

It wastes way too much money on highway expansions that won’t help.

Raising tolls is deeply regressive, hitting those that can’t afford to live close to work or transit hubs the hardest.

Allows the wealthy to buy their way in to the HOV lanes instead of encouraging more efficient use of resources.

What we NEED is a different way to fund these transit improvements, along with more innovative thinking, rather than taking a bunch of money from struggling commuters and throwing it away on highway expansions.

The first question is: “why would they choose to increase the tolls to pay for this?” Some may think that increasing tolls will decrease traffic over the bridges, but it’s clear that the traffic situation is so bad that anyone that could avoid our congested bridges would already be doing so. For a consistent commuter crossing the bridge every workday, that adds up to $62 in *additional* tolls per month ($750/yr). That’s a significant amount of money for a poor family struggling to afford the Bay Area’s extreme cost of living, but it is NOT enough to justify moving closer to a transit option, or taking a lower paying job with a better commute. Living next to a useful transit hub is expensive, and putting that $62 / month towards rent is not going to open up any significantly new housing options. In the end, most people will have to keep commuting over the bridge.

So again, why increase the tolls? Our best guess is: myopic thinking, politics, and control — the sponsor of Measure 3, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, can more easily control the toll money because it is already plugged in to the tolling system and has a matching jurisdiction. They also don’t feel like they have an understanding or control of other options, like carbon taxes or progressive income taxes — these are out of their wheelhouse. Finally, the wealthy political elite cross bridges less frequently and thus rarely pay these tolls anyway, and they don’t feel the cost because it is a much smaller fraction of their income, so it’s easier to get their support for a toll increase. In case it’s not clear, these are terrible reasons to raise $4.5 billion dollars via increased tolls.

Secondly, funding highway expansions is a proven waste of money in heavily trafficked regions. Congested metro areas have vast amounts of “latent demand” — that is, people that WOULD drive if the traffic wasn’t so bad, but choose to use an alternative instead (take the train, work from home, drive at a different time of day, etc). There is also the principle of “induced demand” at work. So in real life, when a congested highway is expanded, at great cost and disruption mind you, a bunch of this extra capacity is almost immediately gobbled up by the latent demand, and any remaining capacity is filled by inducing more demand, until the situation is just as bad as it was before. This is a well-studied phenomenon since the 1960’s, and you can read more about it here: https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/. With the projected increases in Bay Area population, and the timeframe for these projects, congestion will almost certainly be WORSE by the time all these hundreds of millions of dollars in highway expansions are done. It’s also worth noting that this is exactly what has happened with most of our past highway expansion projects — we’ve spent billions over the decades and traffic is worse now than ever.

The careful reader may notice that incrementally increasing public transit WON’T improve traffic congestion for the same reasons — if you take one person off the road and put them in a train, another car will replace them. It may seem like this suggests we shouldn’t expand transit either, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even if the congestion and number of cars on the road stays the same, if you shift the ratio so more people are getting where they want to go more quickly and efficiently because of transit, biking, or walking — that’s a win. Fewer highway deaths, less pollution, less time wasted, and better quality of life for a larger fraction of the population.

It’s important to note, however, that it is theoretically possible to build your way out of these problems. For example, if you quadruple the size of 101 overnight, traffic would of course be way better. The problem is that it’s just not practical to expand highways like that — we do not have anywhere near the space or the money. But with effective mass transit and urban design it actually IS feasible to get 4x increases in throughput, or more, within the same footprint. How, you ask? It’s pretty simple, really. One lane of freeway filled with cars as it typically is today can move about 1,440 people / hour, whereas a bus lane can handle about 4x that — 6,000 people / hour. And grade-separated lightrail can handle more than 5x that — 32,000 people per hour in approximately the same width of transit corridor. So we can take that exact same freeway lane, fill it with buses, and increase our traffic capacity 4x. If we want to invest more up front we can convert it to rail and increase capacity 22x instead. Check out https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/05/26/the-supply-and-demand-of-street-space/ for a more detailed analysis.

But oh goody, Measure 3 has a plan to add HOV lanes to 101 — how wonderful! Well…almost. Unfortunately, the plan is to actually make these “HOT” lanes, which means that wealthy people with cash to burn can simply pay to ride in the fast lane, clogging it up. The idea is that pricing can be set high enough to keep HOT lane traffic flowing, but this just makes it an even more elite perk. Even worse, it’s almost never enforced — studies have shown that over 30% of cars in the carpool lane only have a single person in them. So not only would it be a perk for the elites and the cheaters of our society, there is no pricing scheme that would keep it under control — people would just cheat and clog it up. Some more info on carpool lane cheating and enforcement: https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/06/26/carpool-lane-cheating-rampant-enforcement-lax-officials-say/

Now you might be thinking — “hmm, they must have thought about this. If I’m carpooling and have Fastrak, there must be some official way to prevent the express lane from charging me money, right? Don’t they actually have special Fastrak transponders for carpooling?” Yup, they do. According to the official Fastak website, the way to prevent getting charged is to either put your Fastrak tag inside a shielded bag that prevents the station from reading it, or get the fancy Fastrak Flex toll tag and flip the switch to “3+” (https://www.bayareafastrak.org/en/guide/doINeedFlex.shtml), and *poof* — no charge. Anyone can easily cheat this system, carpool or not — It’s simply an honor system with almost zero enforcement and confirmed widespread abuse.

The end result is that Measure 3 would further increase the wealth disparity in the Bay Area, a ton of money would get wasted, and on top of that, the cultural tension will get even worse as the wealthier folks with the means to afford express lanes and apartments next to transit hubs reap all the benefits, while their poorer neighbors across the Bay are paying the bulk of the costs with increased bridge tolls.

“But I want to support better transit! Why all the negativity?!?” Fortunately there are tried-and-true solutions that do work, and plenty of innovations that can work even better.

Here’s Our Proposal:

In the interest of deployment speed and minimizing costs, we could make much better use of the existing highway lanes and convert them into HOVR (High Occupancy Vehicle Registration) lanes. Only public buses and *registered* vehicles beyond a certain capacity (say at least 12 passengers) would be allowed to use the lanes, which can be easily verified and enforced automatically by camera — simply check if the Fastrak tag (or registration stickers) are valid and match the license plate, just like is already done in Fastrak tollbooths and express lanes today. Penalties should also be increased, including points on the offender’s license, so you can’t simply treat the fine as a fee for using the lane. The registration system, requirements, and fees (at least monthly to encourage consistent service, but maybe per-mile as well) could be determined in any number of ways to control usage if it becomes a problem, and make sure the system can cover it’s own costs.

If we do some quick math (these numbers would be tuned to try and maximize the system — I did very little research), let’s assume our average occupancy is half a city bus — 20 people — and each bus does 6 commute-like trips a day. If we address half of the 136 million bridge tolls per year, that’s 186,000 commutes per day satisfied by 1600 buses. If we work out the monthly reg fees to $0.50 per commute (leaving plenty of operator margin on ticket sales), that’s $93,000/day, which would be a monthly registration of $1750 per vehicle (significant incentive to make good use of the vehicle), and $34 million in annual revenue from the fees to run the system and fund other projects. (Note that the lost toll revenue could be made up by buses running non-toll routes, like SF/Palo Alto, and reg fees could be increased to fit the market, but also money would be saved by reduced highway spending).

We could also implement smart occupancy tracking systems where in-app ticket sales or badge swipes could register with the FaskTrak account, so any car that exceeds some occupancy threshold could use the HOVR lanes, but that is more complex and not necessary for the first phase.

If you’re wondering “why not jump straight to the 20x capacity increase and convert those lanes to fully grade-separated train lines?”, well, there are many reasons. First off, it would be much more expensive, but it also would take a long time to build, would cause significant disruption during construction, and, possibly most importantly, it would be much less flexible. Trains can only go where the tracks and stations are built, whereas buses can use pretty much any street in our vast network of roads. This means that they can go everywhere people need to go, and they can quickly change routes as those needs change. Furthermore, we don’t think the 6,000 vs. 32,000 numbers are correct for this scenario — the bus passenger throughput in a dedicated freeway HOVR lane would actually be much higher because the stations aren’t inline on the freeway (they are distributed on various connecting road networks, and merging into and out of the lane is infrequent because bus routes would tend to be direct/express routes because that would be the most efficient way to provide value, just like the commuter shuttles that are currently only available to tech workers), thus the HOVR lane would not be slowed down much by stopping, starting, loading, and unloading passengers. The main limitations would be the seating density of the buses, and safe following distances between buses. (quick back of the envelop: a typical transit bus is ~40 ft long and seats ~42 people. Assuming a safe 4-second following distance and traveling 65 miles an hour, that’s 0.5s for the bus + 4 seconds following gives 42 people / 4.5 seconds, or 33,600 people / hour! Doing the same calculation for sedans with only one occupant and tighter 2-second following distances gives only 1,700 people / hour — that’s a 20x increase using the exact same road! Real buses would rarely be 100% full, but even just a 5x increase would be a total game changer, more than doubling the capacity of 101 by converting a single existing lane in each direction).

There is also much more flexibility both in the physical construction and operation of buses. Railways are strictly controlled and regulated since they run on rigid tracks, whereas an HOVR lane could operate as a free market for any busing service or independent vehicles that register. You could have city buses, Lyft drivers with vans, private tech shuttles, Chariot, and other upstarts (PetExpress? BabyBus? LuxuryDirect? AllergyTransit? SpliffLounge?) all using the same lane seamlessly together. Finally, you might also wonder if trains are more environmentally friendly than buses — the answer is yes, but with a shift towards electric buses (which is already happening) the difference is pretty minimal. There are even promising technologies for inductively charging while driving without overhead wires that could cut down on the costs and environmental impact of the batteries required.

“But what if the buses are empty and infrequent, thus making poor use of the lane while the rest of the freeway is backed up?” you ask. Well there are scenarios: 1) the freeway isn’t actually backed up so who cares how well the lane is utilized, or 2) it’s way faster to take a bus than drive since the HOVR lane is clear, so there is a huge market opportunity there if we adjust the details of the registration requirements and fees and run more public buses.

“Bus lanes sound like a good idea, but why let private operators use them at all? Why not just make it 100% public transit.” Well maybe this is actually where we end up — that would be fine. But it would take a while to build up that much public bus service capacity, especially crossing through multiple transit districts, and it would require a lot more funding to get it going. There is no need to wait for government on this — we can fix things really quickly by opening up to private operators.

“Ok, maybe this makes sense for the greater good, but I don’t think public transit will work for me — why should I support this?” Simple, if we can get a bunch of people out of their cars and into buses and other alternatives, it will decongest the roads and make things way better for the people that keep driving their cars. AND you won’t have to pay higher bridge tolls!

“What about all the other transit stuff?” It’s important! But we shouldn’t fund it with regressive fees or taxes, and we shouldn’t let them slow down better projects like HOVR lanes that we can do right away. A much better way to fund them would be either with a progressive tax, or a redistributive pigovian tax (such as a carbon tax where some revenues are injected back in to support low-income people, such as via transit fare subsidies).

So let’s do it — let’s convert some freeway lanes into HOVR lanes and let the market put them to good use. People from all walks of life will have vastly improved access to faster, more efficient transportation, we’ll massively cut our pollution per person/mile, we can deploy it super quickly without any boondoggle infrastructure projects, and it can pay for itself. We just need some legislation, some Fastrak (or similar) camera/scanner enforcement systems, a registration process, and some software tweaks, and we can increase our freeway efficiency many times over.

In Summary

Vote NO on Regional Measure 3 on Tuesday’s June 5th, 2018 ballot.

It wastes way too much money on highway expansions that won’t help.

Raising tolls is deeply regressive, hitting those that can’t afford to live close to work or transit hubs the hardest.

Allows the wealthy to buy their way in to the HOV lanes instead of encouraging more efficient use of resources.

Instead, let’s innovate: