I-394, HOV and HOT Lanes

The first High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes in the United States were the bus-only lane on Shirley Highway (I-395) in Northern Virginia outside of Washington, D.C., in 1969 and the contra-flow bus lane on the approach to New York - New Jersey's Lincoln Tunnel in 1970. To date nearly 1.200 miles of high occupancy vehicles (HOV) lanes have been built in the United States. Federal and state policies currently promote HOV lane projects. Major HOV systems operate in Houston and Dallas, Texas; Seattle, Washington; the Los Angeles and Orange County area and the San Francisco Bay region in California; the Newark, New Jersey, and New York City area; and the Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland region. The rationale behind these policies is that HOV lanes foster carpooling and transit use and thus will reduce congestion and emissions. However, opinions are formed up questioning this efficiency of HOVs and as a result, alternatives are being considered. HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes seem to be an attractive alternative but studies are still underway. Opening the existing HOV to general traffic is a competing alternative for this.

Refer to the following links for HOV lanes and their impacts.

http://www.dot.state.mn.us/newsrels/01/08/09hovstudy.html

http://www.dot.state.mn.us/information/hov/pdfs/hov_sec8.pdf

HOT lanes have been implemented first on State Route 91 in 1995. HOT lanes seem to provide a greater degree of fiscal, consumer welfare, and environmental benefits than other expressway investments.

HOT lanes are being implemented when high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes are not sufficient to reduce traffic congestion.  Many people continue to travel by single occupancy vehicles instead of utilizing carpool lanes.  This leaves the carpool lanes operating below capacity during some hours of the day.  Many drivers have become frustrated enough with these open lanes to demand a way to make the lanes available for all drivers.  HOT Lanes allow for maximum use of all road space during peak times.  Toll prices vary with the level of traffic. They increase during peak hours of demand to deter drivers from using the highways during those times.  Toll revenues contribute funding for new road ways and transit lines. HOT Lanes parallel to "free" lanes require drivers to determine the worth of the tradeoff between time and money. There are some drawbacks to implementing HOT lanes.  First, toll infrastructure is very expensive to install.  Investment must be made in all of the electronic equipment, communication technologies, accounting personnel and software, public relations, and management.  Enforcement also costs money. Cameras, booth attendants and police officers would all be used to enforce the rules of toll ways.  Another issue that arises is equity.  It is probable that the people capable of utilizing the toll ways would have above average income, and that the use of these toll ways would be limited to only those who have the most money.

Refer to the site below for further understanding:

http://www.dot.state.mn.us/information/hov/pdfs/hov_sec10.pdf

I -394:

Interstate 394 was built in the 1980s on the corridor of U.S. Highway 12.  It opened fully completed in 1991.  Highway 12 was a four-lane road with occasional at-grade signalized intersections.  The roadway was being used to capacity and the rapid growth of the Twin Cities promised to make congestion worse at all hours, not just peak times.

I-394 had been in the planning stages for many years, and the construction timeline was over a decade from beginning to end.  Part of the new Interstate was the elevated High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes that are grade separated from Highway 100 to downtown Minneapolis.  These lanes were included for a number of reasons that are not entirely obvious.  First, HOV lanes were becoming standard features of new freeway construction as a response to growing congestion in cities across the country.  Second, the unique reversible lanes were proposed to alleviate peak hour congestion problems and use the physical roadway more efficiently.  The lanes would be open into Downtown in the am drive time and open to the western suburbs during the pm drive time.  Third, there was limited land available at the Penn Avenue crossing to build lanes.  There was not enough land to build an eight lane roadway.  The original planning and construction included six lanes total, two SOV lanes in each direction and two HOV lanes. It turns out, to the east and west, in both directions, of the Penn Avenue crossing I-394 was built with three SOV lanes in each direction.  MnDOT, the agency in charge of the project, argues that the additional capacity of the HOV lanes would mitigate the bottleneck that was built.

The congestion that was immediately created by the bottleneck was not alleviated by the HOV lanes.  The suburban commuters stayed away from the HOV lanes and began pressuring MnDOT and the state legislature to build an additional lane in each direction, which occurred in 1994.  The construction delays and disruption also had no effect on the use of the HOV lanes.  Now, there is growing interest in using the surplus capacity of the HOV lanes on I-394 to reduce the congestion along the freeway.  Some people want to simply open up the lanes to all traffic, continuing the reversible operation.  This would create five SOV lanes into and out of Downtown Minneapolis in the am and pm rush hours.  Another proposal is converting the elevated HOV lanes into High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes.

Many problems exist with every possible use for the HOV lanes.

• To leave them as they are leaves unused capacity on the roadway and does nothing to help congestion.  It is very unlikely that adding transit capacity will happen.  There are already very successful park and ride lots along 394, but Metro Transit has no inclination to add any capacity to the system along this route, and more park and ride construction is cost prohibitive. 
• Opening the lanes to all traffic would violate the Federal funding requirements.  The Federal government will require the State of Minnesota to repay the federal contribution to the construction if the HOV use is abandoned.  The only way around this is to have the state’s Washington delegation press the U.S. DOT waive those charges.  This has been done in New Jersey, amongst other places, and could be done but would require the support of the Minnesota delegation.  Opening the lanes to all traffic is being championed by state Senator Dick Day, from Owatonna, the same man responsible for the ramp meter shut-off experiment. 
• The lanes could be converted to toll lanes, where SOVs could use the lanes by paying a toll.  This idea has been used elsewhere in the nation.  However, this is a very controversial idea as roadways are generally considered something that should be free.  Charging a toll can be seen an elitist, non-equitable use of a public road.