52 miles of HOT lanes being built with plans to serve expanded GRTA routes (Atlanta: maintenance, professionals)

[AtlantaIsHot]

Originally Posted by bu2

Commuter rail, light rail and HRT must be maintained for extremely long periods of time also. Not only that, but you have to subsidize operations.

Of course you do. But they are far less costly than hundreds of miles of enormous 18 lane highways and bridges to maintain too...

If indeed rail needs to be subsidized, that isn't a worse evil than subsidizing the construction industry and salivating developers with new roads that don't get maintained. Rather, I would consider that the better option. Expecting gubmints to do anything perfectly well and fully efficiently is another farcical American tendency. However, we cannot go on forever building endless road networks while we are $62,000,000,000,000 in debt with a government that cannot control itself either.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by AtlantaIsHot

Of course you do. But they are far less costly than hundreds of miles of enormous 18 lane highways and bridges to maintain too...

If indeed rail needs to be subsidized, that isn't a worse evil than subsidizing the construction industry and salivating developers with new roads that don't get maintained. Rather, I would consider that the better option. Expecting gubmints to do anything perfectly well and fully efficiently is another farcical American tendency. However, we cannot go on forever building endless road networks while we are $62,000,000,000,000 in debt with a government that cannot control itself either.

There was a Texas official who made the comment that the road system wasn't scalable. You can't endlessly build roads, but you can't NOT build and just hope everyone rides rail. The only rail ridden will be the jobs riding the rail out of town.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by bu2

There was a Texas official who made the comment that the road system wasn't scalable. You can't endlessly build roads, but you can't NOT build and just hope everyone rides rail. The only rail ridden will be the jobs riding the rail out of town.

That's exactly what happened in NYC. They can't build roads or rails.

[sedimenjerry]

HOT works just fine for me. I refuse to drive past Jimmy Carter on 85N in the mainlines unless it's after 730. Sometimes in the morning the lane slows down but often it's because the entry/exit is clogged by mainline traffic. I have no doubt a separated lane would work much better.

[ATLTJL]

Barring an accident, they should keep moving at 55.

And then....reality set in.

Sure would be nice if this was true. Visit I-85 at 7:30am on your average weekday and you'll see that it just ain't. Not by a long shot.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

And then....reality set in.

Sure would be nice if this was true. Visit I-85 at 7:30am on your average weekday and you'll see that it just ain't. Not by a long shot.

Can't speak to I-85 as I really never see it outside I-285 at that time of day. But if that's the case, they just didn't set it up right. The ones in Houston work beautifully (except where there are accidents). I-85 was done the cheap way, a conversion of a diamond HOV lane-no new separated lanes. If you've got the variable rates going up to $10 as has happened there, you've done something wrong.

[ATLTJL]

I've seen the rates as high as $9.50.

I've seen the HOT lane move no faster, and even occasionally slower than, the regular lanes on those very same days.

The HOT lane is more reliable on the afternoon commute, but even then it doesn't always move faster than regular lanes regardless of what the price is.

I've often wondered how they messed it up so badly.

[fourthwarden]

I think not having physically seperated lanes (no paint doesn't count) is the main issue. The roads still have the same critical volume that regulates the average travel speed. Even if you have a HOT lane, that critical volume is still there. Yeah, you can price people out of it to 'control' how much flow there is in that lane, but there's a narrow range where people won't use the lane at all, or so people will use the lane that it's useless.

Even when hitting the right spot in that range, you still have the difference in travel speeds, where sure a person in the HOT lane could be going 75+, but if the traffic in the next lane over is nearly standstill, it becomes a safety issue to be moving at that relative speed, even if it is only a percieved one, and so the travel speed slows to an appropriate amount compared to the rest.

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by bu2

Can't speak to I-85 as I really never see it outside I-285 at that time of day. But if that's the case, they just didn't set it up right. The ones in Houston work beautifully (except where there are accidents). I-85 was done the cheap way, a conversion of a diamond HOV lane-no new separated lanes. If you've got the variable rates going up to $10 as has happened there, you've done something wrong.

And this is the reason why GDOT/SRTA is no longer doing HOV-to-HOT conversions.

[jsvh]

They need to convert the entire highway to being congestion toll based.