Toll signs on 101 report your transponder setting

http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2022/03/09/toll/

by zdw • 4 years ago

283 389 4 years ago

71a54xd• 4 years ago

I recently rented a vehicle on Turo in CA for three days and racked up maybe three toll charges - even though I followed the law and did my best to avoid HOV lanes when I didn't have enough occupants.

I was greeted the following month with a *$320* ticket. The fees themselves totalled to no more than $12 which I would've been totally okay paying, but the overage fee for non-payment (which how was I supposed to know the owner wasn't watching the records for his vehicle - per Turo rules?) were over *$100 per charge*. To call this predatory is an understatement. Also, a word of warning to anyone using Turo, they usually indicate that "the driver is liable for all toll charges while driving the vehicle" which can screw you if you don't confirm in writing with the owner if they're watching toll records. Always settle via the Turo app, many owners will try to settle with you directly and try to force you to pay the full fee. Fortunately, I was able to get slightly less ripped off and pay 40% of the charge by settling through the Turo app.

I love CA and a lot of my friends live there, but goodness are they chalking up reasons for me to never live there again.

BoorishBears2• 4 years ago

I don't use Turo anymore, no point at all.

Back in the day Turo was mostly people with somewhat interesting cars who wanted to share them, and rental agencies had nothing interesting, and the pricing was reasonable.

Now a $60 a day car can come out to more than a $100 a day car because of extended insurance for specific models, Turo fees, weird discount structures, massive deposits (One $70 a day car had an $700 deposit).

And there's no way to actually account for that in searching, the estimated price never includes any of this. So you're left to randomly click around and "guess" which cars don't all belong to the same guy tacking on a massive deposit, or asking for some money on the side.

It all just feels incredibly sleazy, and wreaks of Turo's model essentially failing since private owners care more about their cars than an agency, and they likely had to deal with a ton more claims.

There are also a ton of deeply unsafe cars on there now, especially older non-enthusiast cars. Rental agencies might not be the best about safety, but they also won't keep a 100k mile structurally rusted out econobox laying around...

I just went through that last week and decided to go with Sixt. I got a rental "A5 or similar" (convertible 4 series was the option I took at the counter), and for 12 dollars a day I get unlimited tolls in CA.

djrogers• 4 years ago

100k miles is ‘deeply unsafe’? You can’t evaluate structural rust in a photo, so if you’re deciding safety based on mileage you have a very unreal sense of safe vs unsafe.

drstewart• 4 years ago

Back in the day Turo was mostly people with somewhat interesting cars who wanted to share them, and rental agencies had nothing interesting, and the pricing was reasonable.
Now a $60 a day car can come out to more than a $100 a day car because of extended insurance for specific models, Turo fees, weird discount structures, massive deposits

This honestly feels like the story of every gig economy service out there (Airbnb, Turo, etc). They were unique and interesting and well worth the cost versus traditional competitors at one point. Now they're at the point where I'm back to cross-shopping the traditional options (hotels / car agencies / etc) first.

RandallBrown• 4 years ago

I used Turo for the first time on a trip to Salt Lake City recently to go skiing. I wanted something with 4WD in case it snowed. Turo was hundreds of dollars cheaper than any of the airport rentals.

It seemed like most of the rentals there were people running their own rental companies (fleets of 4 or 5 cars). It worked really well for us.

Johnny5552• 4 years ago

but goodness are they chalking up reasons for me to never live in there again

California doesn't set Turo's toll policies, and many states have implemented automated tolling, so your list of states to live in in going to get smaller and smaller.

I think the biggest problem with automated tolling is that every state has their own independent system -- the federal government should enforce one standard, so I can use my toll reader on any toll road in the country.

Oh hey, I was looking to see if there was a multi-state toll tag and it sounds like the US government did pass a law requiring interoperability, but this linked website doesn't appear to sell this "nationalpass", so I don't know what happened to the law:

https://www.nationalpass.net/

Toll Interoperability by 2016

H.R.4348 - MAP-21

In 2012, Congress passed the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) to ease the burden of tolled interstate travel by providing motorists the convenience of a single toll tag and account.

bigbillheck• 4 years ago

every state has their own independent system -- the federal government should enforce one standard, so I can use my toll reader on any toll road in the country.

My EZ-Pass works in 19 states.

bbarn• 4 years ago

I don't think interstate highways should be tolled, period. They were paid for decades ago, and maintenance should be covered by the existing gas tax. I am not opposed to convenience highways in metro areas being tolled, as long as there is a non-toll option that is reasonably similar in non-rush hour times. As it stands the major Chicago to New York and New York to DC routes are tolls almost the entire way. The nation paid for those routes, and now pays to use them as well.

mindslight• 4 years ago

The biggest problem with automated tolling is there is no law restricting how rental companies can use those tolls against you. I don't know the current state of things, but there used to be this thing where rental companies would charge you say a $30 convenience fee simply for passing on a $3 toll charge. The consent-fiction was to bring your own toll transponder and cross your fingers it worked or avoid toll roads or whatever.

This of course is the shape of much corruption in the US - the government mandates some thing but with no restrictions on its abuse, and then private companies leverage that mandate to screw you (see also: DL/SSN numbers). What needs to happen is any such mandates need to be designed as complete systems that regulate all constructive behavior, rather than mere partial solutions that complexity gets built on top of.

jcranmer2• 4 years ago

Ah yes, MAP-21. It passed a requirement that all electronic toll systems become interoperable by 2016, but without any penalty for failure or money inducements to succeed, so nothing happened.

Well, that's not quite true. There are a couple of major consortia of electronic toll systems in the US. The largest consortium is the E-ZPass system, which started out with a cooperation in the NYC area and grew to encompass basically everything from Illinois to Virginia to Maine by the time MAP-21 passed. Since it was the largest, in terms of number of systems implemented, their position was more or less that everyone would implement compatibility with E-ZPass. North Carolina, Minnesota, Florida (and I believe Kentucky) added compatibility to E-ZPass post-2012.

The other three consortia are California (interoperable with no one else, because California I guess), the Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas group, and the Georgia/North Carolina/Florida interoperability region (which will be fully subsumed by E-ZPass once Georgia's system becomes interoperable, apparently later this year). There's still a couple of systems that interoperate with nobody else as well.

Melatonic11• 4 years ago

Is that just Turo screwing you over?

In SoCal as long as you have a fastrack account associated with the vehicle/license plate even if you have no transponder your account still gets charged the normal fee + a small additional courtesy fee. I believe the additional fee might be 6$ which does not seem ridiculous (to me at least).

To me this more just sounds like the owner of that vehicle is an idiot and never registered the plate with fastrack.

roflchoppa5• 4 years ago

Man I really hate the new HOV lanes, there are too many negligent drivers that drive below the speed limit, at least with a carpool lane you could overtake.

core-utility• 4 years ago

I'd frequently get stuck behind buses, box trucks, and vehicles towing trailers. It's astounding how the latter two are allowed. I somewhat understand municipal buses in an effort to ensure more people ride, and it wouldn't be as annoying if it weren't coupled with the other two.

vondur• 4 years ago

Wow, I just checked, and you can legally tow travel trailers in the TollRoads, except for the 91 expressway here in SoCal.

https://thetollroads.com/help/faq/396

slg4• 4 years ago

Is this a Bay Area specific thing? The terms "HOV lanes" and "carpool lanes" are used interchangeably in my experience. Are you just calling out separated lanes? The reason for the separation is that traffic in those lanes is often moving much faster than the other lanes which makes it very dangerous to give people the possibility of pulling into that lane unexpectedly. The ideal HOV/carpool lanes should have two lanes to allow passing and be separated from the rest of the lanes to promote safety. The 110 in Los Angeles is a great example and it uses the same transponders with switches that the article is discussing.

ddoolin• 4 years ago

In my experience, the vast majority of HOV/carpool lanes are single lanes, although some stretches like the 110 and the 91 are doubled up and are a much better experience. It's hard to believe the 405, of all places, is a single HOV lane and it bunches up pretty much continuously.

Although, on the 91, I don't know that it uses transponder settings since there's a dedicated "3+" lane when you approach reading areas, which are situated right in front of CHP buildings (so they can see if you're really 3+?)

gowld• 4 years ago

They are synonyms, but parent is talking about separated roadway for HOV, that you can't merge into / out of at will.

jiveturkey2• 4 years ago

He's referring to the people that drive whatever speed they want to in lane #2.

roflchoppa5• 4 years ago

I was under the assumption that HOV lanes cannot be crossed over (double or single white lines) while carpools are dotted and are open to traffic flowing in and out.

Of course you can only use it as an overtake lane in none-carpool hours, but now that’s not even an option.

benlivengood3• 4 years ago

But that applies to every lane in CA. The equilibrium seems to be staggered traffic in every lane going the same speed so that no one can cut you off and you know someone is filling your blind spots at all times. Oddly enough the right-hand lane is often free (mostly on 101N between Gilroy and San Jose) since no one wants to interact with merging traffic (one of the very few traffic laws/suggestions anyone follows).

bradlys14• 4 years ago

If you instead just think of everyone who drives as very lazy, unengaged, and completely checked out - this is how you get the behavior of traffic in the bay area. Everyone doing everything they can to not have to signal, to change lanes, to slow down or speed up, and to avoid interacting with other traffic.

The issue here is that people choose it in an non-optimal way and thus it makes many people having to do a lot more to get around others.

And, yeah, the right lane is what I end up having to go into to get past people all the time because they create those walls constantly. And they're not wanting to interact with merging traffic because they're lazy.

spike0215• 4 years ago

Generally what I've noticed on the Peninsula (like driving 280 N/S or sometimes 101) and the South Bay is that people drive like they should be in the left-most lane the farther away they are from their exit. This means regardless of what speed they'll be driving, they tend to gravitate toward the faster lanes and inevitably create traffic. Not only that, but many of these people then cut across all 4 or 5 lanes of traffic at the last possible minute because they realize almost too late that their exit is next and they don't understand that in most cases they can just use the next exit if they miss the first one.

roflchoppa5• 4 years ago

I hit a dresser in that lane doing about 90 mph, my buddy said it turned into dust.

Der_Einzige• 4 years ago

The small amount of discomfort you experience from people driving too slowly is nothing compared to the impacts of people trying to drive as fast as possible. Turns out, that traffic paradoxically moves FASTER (in the aggregate) when you reduce speed limits.

https://theconversation.com/increasing-the-speed-limit-wont-...

https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/413955/

https://3659de2n61p72dta253nvqzd-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...

No, you do not need to pass slower traffic. Turn your radar cruise control on, enjoy your tunes, and learn to delay gratification.

throwaway0a5e6• 4 years ago

The root cause is speed differential between traffic elements or groups thereof. You can either bring the upper bound down with draconian enforcement or you can bring the lower bound up, mostly by raising the statutory speed limit. The latter is far more popular.

roflchoppa5• 4 years ago

No radar cruise control, it’s a carburetor, personally I don’t like driving behind people, their not paying attention to the road conditions.

classichasclass5• 4 years ago

Meanwhile, half the HOV-lane drivers around here are single occupant, and I never see the CHP bat an eye.

supernova87a2• 4 years ago

What really bugs me right now is that the lanes are not hard-divided or at least 4-stripe divided from the regular lanes like they are in Southern CA.

So what people are doing is switching lanes without fear of penalty in the stretches between the monitoring gantries, and either causing inconvenience or outright danger to others driving responsibly.

Hopefully this will be fixed.

Kina• 4 years ago

What really bugs me right now is that the lanes are not hard-divided or at least 4-stripe divided from the regular lanes like they are in Southern CA.

I actually think this is fine, but the signage is _awful_. In a bit of inverse awfulness, look at the 10 in the SGV. They converted a bus lane to an HOV decades (and now Fastrak). It's almost worthless unless your goal is to get from El Monte to downtown. There are virtually no exits/entrances. Also, I resent the effort spent on it because none of its glaring problems have ever been dealt with and my understanding is that it was basically converted to a toll road to comply with some federal requirement to lower travel times. So, the local agencies were able to claim they saved 2 minutes on the commute to downtown and got to keep the federal funding. Way to target the metric there.

The difference between how NorCal and SoCal does it is really bizarre. NorCal also has a lot of timed carpool lanes which are slowly being converted to these inane Lexus lanes. The timed carpool lanes felt like they were never a good idea because it seemed to generally cause confusion and instead increased congestion as people weren't sure whether they could use them. Also, I remain infuriated that the on-ramps in NorCal have carpool lanes enforced 24/7 instead of like they are in SoCal--only when the meter is actually on.

amirhirsch• 4 years ago

Do you like to merge onto a 65 mph highway going 40? Do you like to drive your Prius in the left lane without passing anyone, with no one in front of you, and a trail of cars behind you?

Welcome to Silicon Valley! You'll fit right in!

artificial• 4 years ago

People tend to bring their regional driving habits with them and they’re all in conflict.

roflchoppa5• 4 years ago

Buck-twenty in a 70s Japanese tin can for me baby.

m4633• 4 years ago

If I find myself stuck behind a slow driver, it is very likely (statistically) to be a prius.

I'm uncertain if it is the demographic that buys a prius, or the techno display that rewards frugal driving.

stfp• 4 years ago

It's not negligent to drive below the speed limit

throwaway0a5e6• 4 years ago

It's negligent to be an outlier, high or low, compared to other traffic speeds.

I'll cut vehicles in poor states of repair or laden commercial vehicles some slack when it comes to things like merges and hill climbs.

jiveturkey2• 4 years ago

It is if you don't make a proper lane selection.

Spooky23• 4 years ago

That sounds pretty awful.

As much as the DC metro area is a hellscape their auction style access to HOV lanes is probably the most straightforward.

It’s nice in that you know how fucked you are based on the price. I remember passing through once and one section had like a $38 toll, I just got off the highway and grabbed a burger.

rzimmerman5• 4 years ago

One thing I love about driving in America is that (in a sense) everyone is equal. Whether you drive a brand new Ferrari or a 1990 Toyota, you still wait in the same traffic. HOV/carpool lanes are an understandable conceit to incentivize good behaviors, but the idea that you can pay money to skip traffic just feels awful to me.

Those transponders are cool though. I have a different one for my electric car with a CAV sticker which lets me use some of the SoCal lanes alone.

slg4• 4 years ago

the idea that you can pay money to skip traffic just feels awful to me.

This is no different from any toll road except the toll road and the free road are right next to each other and are therefore perfect substitutes with the only difference being the amount of traffic on each.

toast0• 4 years ago

Yeah, toll roads don't feel right either. Of course, it also didn't feel right to buy a PHEV with carpool stickers, but I did it when my carpool partner took leave. Free charging at work was nice too (thanks Mark), although I was happier when I could take Caltrain.

marcinzm• 4 years ago

but the idea that you can pay money to skip traffic just feels awful to me.

Plenty of places in the US have whole highways that require payment to use. Same for most tunnels and bridges that you can go around but it takes significantly longer.

SketchySeaBeast• 4 years ago

Yeah, I was going to point out - aren't toll roads a thing?

ra7• 4 years ago

Like Texas. It's littered with toll highways.

vmception• 4 years ago

One thing I love about driving in America is that (in a sense) everyone is equal. Whether you drive a brand new Ferrari or a 1990 Toyota, you still wait in the same traffic.

Where is it different?

rzimmerman5• 4 years ago

Sorry - just speaking about my own experience and implying that an important “American value” to me is classlessness, which seems to erode over time. Thanks for calling me out on that. I don’t think this is different anywhere in the world.

bombcar2• 4 years ago

I've heard (could be rumor) that the "high speed highways" in Japan are toll roads with tolls so high basically nobody uses them. Maybe that's an example?

mgarciaisaia• 4 years ago

In Buenos Aires, the northern, suburban, tolled highways have a non-tolled two-lane alternative that go side by side. Going west or south - some of them have a speedbump-filled alternative street, others don't even have that.

They don't ask which brand of car you're driving, but there's a really high correlation between income level and living area - northern parts being the richest.

sjburt• 4 years ago

Well, if you are wealthy enough you hire a driver and somehow that counts as a carpool, at least in LA.

samhw• 4 years ago

Hahaha, this is the best thing I've read all day. That's fantastic. I knew there would be a way for rich people to get around it. (Like when my friend got around COVID restrictions travelling to Mexico by just taking his dad's plane [since lots of the restrictions applied only to passenger jets due to transmission risk].)

rzimmerman5• 4 years ago

Or like a VC I once spoke with listening to a rideshare pitch: “I’m not your target market. I drive alone in my Bentley in the carpool lane. I don’t care if I get a $400 ticket.”

jffry• 4 years ago

There is a highway near Washington DC (I-66) that has dual-rate HOV lanes like this. During peak rush hour times, the lanes are free to vehicles with 2+ people, but solo drivers can also opt to pay to use them.

They wanted to ensure that the HOV lanes move fast enough that the people who are carpooling will actually be rewarded for doing so. This meant that there had to be a dynamic toll for solo drivers.

Imagine the outrage when on a particularly busy day, this dynamic toll exceeded $20 for a ten-mile journey. The reality is plenty of people were cheating and using the HOV lanes as solo drivers, and now the tolling mechanism means they can no longer get away with it.

supernova87a2• 4 years ago

Well, one practical response to this is that the toll lanes do not really cause other lanes to be slower (than what it was before), even though it feels like some group is being allowed to bypass everyone else.

In the sense that -- suppose that you have a 4 lane highway. Adding a 5th lane will actually not help much to increase the capacity of the highway if it is traffic-bottlenecked. For certain traffic volumes and lane configurations, adding lanes doesn't increase throughput.

So having a toll lane basically just helps to generate revenue from people who are willing to pay (and allow those who are willing to pay to drive slightly faster past traffic), while not significantly slowing down most other people (who already experienced congestion in certain stretches of highway before this).

Now, whether this feels fair and is a good idea is a different question (and clearly generates a lot of opinions).

tbihl• 4 years ago

In a very significant way, this is not true. Everyone is paying with their time and losing it irreparably to a wasteful process, yes, but the quality of that time varies enormously with how much you spend. On the low end, you're sitting in an old car with significant road noise, a mushy clutch on your manual transmission, crappy speakers to listen to your podcasts via cassette adapter. weak/no air conditioning, windows that let most of the light through, and you're sitting low because your cheap 1990s car wasn't built for highway warfare. At the other end of the spectrum, you're sitting on an air-conditioned leather seat in a brand-new electric SUV with tint so dark that for some reason it is only legal in SUVs, taking calls with a good microphone array and excellent speakers; you're also sitting high up in a vehicle equipped for modern highway warfare, but you barely even notice because your car's radar/lidar is doing most of the spacing and lane-keeping for you anyway.

So, yes, everyone's sitting around waiting, but it's the difference between sitting at home in your living room and sitting in the DMV.

rzimmerman5• 4 years ago

I guess I just like the idea that whether or not you have a nice car/experience, it still takes just as long to get there. Not advocating anything - I just appreciate the abstract equalizer of the road.

asah• 4 years ago

yep, all equal - fees, fines and costs (e.g. fuel) are the same fraction of your income whether you make $10,000 per year or $10,000,000 per year. /s

gnicholas6• 4 years ago

Note that you have to have one of the newer transponders to be able to indicate how many occupants you have. If you have an old-school transponder it assumes you just have two occupants, and you pay the highest rate.

I recently ordered a new one, and it appears to be free, assuming you send back the previous transponder.

jeffbee2• 4 years ago

I got my Fastrak Flex in 2017. They aren't that new.

gnicholas6• 4 years ago

Great! Some folks have had transponders for a decade or more, as they don't need replacing very often. AFAIK, this is the first time that there has been a reason to get a new transponder if your existing transponder is still operational. It's also not communicated very well to customers. I've talked with many people who wondered how Fastrak knows how many people are in your vehicle. They were unaware that there are new transponders with a toggle.

bradlys14• 4 years ago

Yes but given almost no one on the peninsula ever needed it. They’re a new requirement and many of us who had them are now having to order the new ones to accommodate these damn toll lanes.

I hate the toll lanes with a passion. You get charged even when there is 0 traffic. It should be free unless there’s traffic! (Or just not have a toll lane to begin with and stop punishing the poor over and over!)

AnotherGoodName• 4 years ago

Wow this isn't known. The signs don't say that you need a new transponder to get the discount anywhere. I did always question how they'd know but quite simply no one made it clear. I haven't yet been hit since I don't drive often but wow this just seems to be looking to catch drivers who simply read the sign and assume they're good to go since they match the conditions listed on the sign. It turns out there's a hidden condition!

gnicholas6• 4 years ago

If you have a transponder, you wouldn't necessarily even know that you were being charged for 2 occupants when you had 3+. You'd have to look at your detailed bill (who does that?) and remember how many occupants you had on which trips. Most people would probably just be overcharged until they realized that they need to get the transponder with toggle.

throwaway0a5e6• 4 years ago

The signs don't say that you need a new transponder to get the discount anywhere.

That's a feature, not a bug.

fshbbdssbbgdd5• 4 years ago

I believe there is a sign that says “fastrak flex required”, but it might not be obvious to everyone what that means.

Rebelgecko2• 4 years ago

I think the newest transponders are actually the transparent RFID stickers that are smaller than even the "FastTrak Flex" batteryless switchable transponders.

Note that the different FastTrak operators in California have DRASTICALLY different fee structures. Some have monthly fees, some don't. Some charge for switchable transponders, some give them for free, some require a deposit, some only need your license plate # to charge you, etc.

causi• 4 years ago

CHP could roll up on them and give them a ticket.

I suspect almost everyone could get out of it by claiming to forget what setting they had it on, or that they'd flipped it but the switch didn't go all the way over, or it was sticky, etc.

function_seven• 4 years ago

I suspect the cop will have heard all of these explanations a hundred times by the time they pull you over, and will write the ticket anyway. :)

bradlys14• 4 years ago

Depends on how pretty you are and how much you cry.

smachiz• 4 years ago

only a matter of time before this is photo enforced with recognition for humans being done by ML.

Bud6• 4 years ago

Except the assholes with illegally-tinted windows will ignore it and get away with it.

Analemma_• 4 years ago

Most traffic violations, like parking tickets, are "strict liability": mens rea doesn't matter, if the offense was committed you're getting a ticket. Presumably this will be the same.

dehrmann2• 4 years ago

There's no safety aspect, so they really shouldn't be. There's a big difference between "I didn't mean to go 120 in a 65" and "I forgot to change the switch on my billing transponder to '2 people.'"

FullyFunctional4• 4 years ago

Ough, this touches a nerve. The Fastrak system is atrocious and I have been battling it for years. Let me count the ways:

- They took my CC number and just kept replenishing $25 every so often even though it had a big balance already. Thankfully my card expired so now I'm sloooowly (don't drive much anymore) working my way through the $100+ credit on my account.

- It is so hard to check and contest charges. I had to sent in my complaint with snail mail and IIRC it took a month before I got a reply back that requested information that I already wrote in the first letter doesn't apply. I gave up at this point.

- There is _NO_ way to check the transponder short of just using it and waiting a week for the event to show up on the bill. My windshield was apparently blocking radio transmissions (I know why, don't tell me) and experimenting with a different location has a crazy long cycle time due to the above. There days I guess I could do it with a car driving behind me reading what the sign say, but that only works when there isn't much traffic.

I hate Fastrak.

benlivengood3• 4 years ago

It was nice that the intermediate version beeped when getting pinged; the new flex version (with number of riders switch) is silent again. Maybe it's time to hack a tone into it.

erwincoumans2• 4 years ago

The new Flex transponder (with 1,2,3 switch) does beep for me when passing a bridge toll port (84, 92 etc), not on the highway 101 lane.

Penguinx628• 4 years ago

I am not related to them in any way but I would recommend you to use privacy.com to control charges against your cards for situations like this. Capitol One has a service called 'Eno' and Citi has 'virtual account numbers' if you have either of those services they can also help you control charges in a much more granular way than using a regular credit card. Hope this comment helps someone like these services help me.

pengaru• 4 years ago

Have you actually used citi? When I last checked their web site for managing the virtual CC #s required flash.

MisterTea• 4 years ago

In the northeast we have E-ZPass which is equally evil.

- They too have a stupidly weird replenishment algorithm where it takes what feels like weeks to adjust. Then out of nowhere, it will increase many times even if you only increased travel temporarily. It went from maintaining a $26 balance to $180 which will take forever to use.

- "It is so hard to check and contest charges." - We used to have a business with two delivery vans with E-ZPass. We received a very high bill and it was full of "toll violation" charges which were 2 or 3 dollars that accompanied nearly every toll, some with two violations. I called them to inquire what these violation were and they flat out told me "we dont know." I forget the details but we wound up having to pay though the charges never appeared again. I feel like they robbed us using a computer glitch.

- "There is _NO_ way to check the transponder" - Yup. This is really frustrating because Ive gone on trips where the vehicle was supposedly on the account but the tag wasn't registering at the NJ tolls on I95 during a road trip. So I got a bunch of unpaid toll violations I had to manually resolve through their awful web portal. I then check the account and find the vehicle was not on the account - huh? I am sure I added it. Who knows...

I hate E-ZPass.

Arainach2• 4 years ago

It's a symptom of contracting everything out to the lowest bidder.

In Washington State who has the "Good to Go" system. Its deployment has been full of quirks, my favorite of which was that if your balance ever went negative (say you had it set up to replenish at $5 but got a $10 toll) the system would refuse to charge you (even when you had a payment method on file or went to their website) and you had to call in and talk to a human to fix it.

kevin_thibedeau2• 4 years ago

It depends on the issuing authority. I never had problems with excessive billing from the Thruway authority while mostly using it for NYC area tolls.

I had a motorcycle EZpass die after four years and I didn't know about it for nearly a year because many of the NJ barriers don't give feedback on the status. Looking back through the records I could see that I rarely got billed from a license plate read so I optimized my lane positioning.

amysox• 4 years ago

Here around Denver, we have the ExpressToll system, which started out as the electronic billing system for E-470 (the toll-only highway that runs around the eastern Denver metro area), but then got adapted to the I-25 express lanes, and then to HOT lanes carved out of existing freeways (US-36 and northern I-25 first, then C-470, I-70 through part of the mountains, and more coming soon). They use either a basic RFID sticker that always charges the toll, or a switchable pass with two positions. One bad thing: "high occupancy," for which you can use the "free" position on the switch, requires 3 occupants now, not just 2.

The other toll-only highway, the Northwest Parkway, has its own pass system (GO PASS), but ExpressToll is compatible with it as well.

I have the sticker for my car; it's always seemed to work OK for me.

the_svd_doctor• 4 years ago

Don’t transactions (should) show up in your online account pretty much instant? I thought they did for me.

I also hate fastrack and the “fast lanes”. Only good thing is they send you the transponder pretty much for free :)

classichasclass5• 4 years ago

Not always. Particularly if you're driving outside of your provider's service area, it may take as long as a week for a charge to show up. I have a long commute right now and I sometimes don't see charges for days.

FullyFunctional4• 4 years ago

They (the Fastrack rep) literally told me to wait for days. In my experience there's at least a 24 hour latency.

vostrocity3• 4 years ago

I bought a new car and I couldn't figure out if my license plate has the digit '0' or the letter 'O', so I added both versions to my FasTrak to check which license plate would get charged. It took 4 days after crossing the toll to finally see the charge on my account.

throwaway09223• 4 years ago

I had a problem with someone else having registered their car at my address. Fastrak matched the address and automatically charged their tolls to me.

I used their terrible web portal to remove the other car from my account. They just added it back.

I called them and told them it wasn't my car, that I did not consent to the charges. They didn't care.

I ended up just cancelling Fastrak entirely and now I pay tolls only for my own vehicle manually. I can't use carpool lanes because of this.

I've been considering registering a Fastrak with someone else's address, just so I can use carpool lanes again.

FullyFunctional4• 4 years ago

That's awful but is pretty much confirming my experience. At the revenue level they have, you'd assume they could do better, but presumably having a monopoly means they don't have to care.

throwaway0a5e6• 4 years ago

I've been considering registering a Fastrak with someone else's address, just so I can use carpool lanes again.

Use the address of someone in management at Fastrak if you want the problem fixed.

classichasclass5• 4 years ago

What FasTrak provider is this? They're different in different regions. Down here in SoCal Orange county has their own system, San Diego, Riverside, LA, you name it. They're all required by state law to use interoperable transponders but that's where it ends.

tomc19853• 4 years ago

This reminds me, the tolling system for the SF bay bridges are even worse... for some resaon you have a narrow band of time to pay your toll and the payment options are super limited. I got Fastrak because of how big a PITA it was and I don't even live there (though it's also in use here in socal)

racnid• 4 years ago

Aaah yes. A while back I rented a car in England, did a bunch of driving, and on my way back to the airport crossed the Dartford Bridge in the dark. For some reason you have 24 hours to pay it then it steadily becomes more and more impossible. I wasn't able to get online to pay it and flew out in the morning. Que a year of increasingly ridiculous demand letters from whoever runs that tolling system. They escalated to sending me bills in the US with short windows to pay which of course arrived after their demand window closed. So I never paid it.

PopAlongKid• 4 years ago

For some bizarre reason, the Bay Bridge toll plaza does not recognize the 1-2-3 settings on the newer FasTrak tags.

PaulHoule• 4 years ago

We have something like that in New York State for me it is trouble free. I used to waste time stacked up in toll plazas around Albany but with EZ Pass I drive right through and don't feel like part of the problem.

vostrocity3• 4 years ago

FasTrak has actually been surprisingly nice for me.

I love the ability to add cars by license plate to an account, and being able to specify exactly when coverage starts and ends down to minute precision. Renting a car? You can add the plate to your account for just the period you're renting so you don't pay the rental company fees.

Melatonic11• 4 years ago

I didnt know they added that - before you could just add a car or remove. Specifying when it starts and ends sounds like a nice upgrade

mixmastamyk• 4 years ago

Next question is who is buying and selling this information?

russellbeattie3• 4 years ago

Get used to it.

In the next 25 years, all the gas stations are going to close and all that gas tax revenue will need to be replaced, as that's how the roads are maintained. Gas tax is a usage tax, so to replace it with something equivalent, we'll need to be able to track our vehicle's road usage. Maybe cars will just self report, as new cars will just be a consumer electronics device with wheels and a broadband connection anyways.

But more than likely the solution will be backwards compatible one at first, like all the license plates becoming e-License plates, with eInk screens and a Fast-Trak style responder for tracking tolls.

Extrapolating on this, the idea that you could get into a vehicle and drive along public roads without those roads making a record of your passage is one that will slowly go away. Get used to it. Seriously.

dehrmann2• 4 years ago

I agree with the premise that governments will have to find a way to make up for the loss of gas tax revenue, but it seems like a really expensive solution, and it doesn't capture use of minor roads.

frumper• 4 years ago

They could just have you report odometer readings when you register it annually. We could even see a smog style car safety inspection to ensure that the numbers match up every few years. If all else fails an odometer reading when selling and the seller owes the taxes on those miles. No system is fool proof, but that would be a lot easier and cheaper than trying to somehow record every mile driven.

brewdad5• 4 years ago

No state is going to want to give up revenues for people who use their roads but live elsewhere. Plenty of major cities are on the border with other states with commuters going back and forth.

Oregon tested GPS trackers as a way to track where those miles are driven and tax people accordingly (you could get a rebate on your tax paid at the pump). Understandably, people balked at having their driving tracked so closely and it never got out of the testing phase.

Now, with pretty much every new car having a tracker installed by the manufacturer, some state will surely try again.

rootusrootus5• 4 years ago

They could just make truckers pay it all. They do the vast majority of damage to the roads as it is. For side roads we could just pay the old fashioned way with normal taxes. People without cars still benefit from the roads existence.

idiotsecant• 4 years ago

This is a good example of policy you get when the people making policy don't understand (or understand but don't want to understand) physics but do understand that the transportation lobby is well-funded and well-connected.

On one hand they get a bunch of kickbacks for their reelection war-chest and some roads fail 5 years after their re-election is over anyway and someone else will be blamed for it. On the other hand they directly fund their opponent who is unlikely to turn down those dollars, possibly fail in their reelection bid, and successfully save some roads that everyone will just assume would have lasted anyway.

It's not hard to see that it's practically impossible for any other outcome, the system is practically designed to create this kind of situation.

myself2482• 4 years ago

Agreed. Road damage scales as the _fourth power_ of the axle weight. That's bonkers, you don't see that exponent in many phenomena.

The question is how to move the funds around, as state taxes and road funding stop at state borders, but vehicles don't. And of course states will have a patchwork of registration rules, and won't share money with each other. So the trucking industry will lobby some state to be a tax haven, and all trucks will just be registered there.

If only we had some sort of organization that allows states to solve issues that happen between states, like a larger government function...

martinald4• 4 years ago

In the UK there are ANPR cameras everywhere. The police can and will pull your driving history (or at least when you passed the cameras), and if you are 'wanted' it will ping the local police force when you drive past one.

Does this exist in the US? This has been going on for nearly 20 years here.

downrightmike4• 4 years ago

No many places like Arizona those cameras were made illegal. Some were installed, but the people voted to remove them. That's the difference between citizens and subjects.

russellbeattie3• 4 years ago

Does this exist in the US?

As with any time this question is asked, try to remember the US is the third largest nation in both geographic size and population, with 320 million citizens spread out over 50 quasi nation-states, a handful of which themselves are bigger than most countries, and all with their own legal systems. We share currency, an army, a flag and a constitution. The rest is a roll of the dice.

That said, at a Federal level, I've never heard of this and where I live in Northern California, I haven't heard of anything to that extent either. That doesn't mean it's not happening in some municipality in Michigan or Hawaii, or even in a different part of my own state. Though, honestly, I doubt it.

The way we do surveillance here is more roundabout: First we allow right wing news media to scare the shit out of all the old people in the country, who then go out and buy doorbell and other Wifi cameras and start live streaming every square inch of their property, 24/7. Then we either compel the bigco to give the government access to the feed, complete with gag order, or the NSA just hacks in and takes it anyways.

It seems to work well. Our video is all HD.

throwaway0a5e6• 4 years ago

In the UK there are ANPR cameras everywhere. The police can and will pull your driving history (or at least when you passed the cameras), and if you are 'wanted' it will ping the local police force when you drive past one.

The systems exist to varying extent on a state by state basis, but they're mostly not used for mundane stuff because the American public even in the most boot-lickey states won't just roll over and take it when the .gov tries to use skynet to screw them out of extra money and the powers that be would rather use the systems sparingly than anger the public and get rules and laws that say they can't.

vostrocity3• 4 years ago

Many states already charge EVs and PHEVs a higher annual registration fee than ICE vehicles. I understand replacing the gas taxes, but very weird since it completely works against federal and state EV/PHEV incentives.

criddell• 4 years ago

What do you think they should do?

adrianmonk• 4 years ago

Crazy(?) solution: tax tires instead of gasoline.

The tax amount would be a function of tire size since that correlates (via vehicle weight) with wear and tear on the roads.

To handle early replacement (flat tires, etc.), when tires are replaced, give a rebate based on remaining tread.

There would probably be a huge market for illegal tires (similar to illegal cigarettes), so that would require enforcement. You'd also need some way to stop tire theft. Maybe encode the vehicle's license plate number into a chip in the tire or something.

Melatonic11• 4 years ago

Couldnt we also just charge a tax on electric vehicle charging stations or even integrate a tax with electric vehicle chargers in homes and multi unit dwellings?

I dont personally oppose some tolls (like bridges or even this) but the gas tax (or modern equivalent) completely going away does not seem like it will happen.

Bud6• 4 years ago

There seem to be some negative comments about this, but in my opinion this is exactly how this should work.

Even better would to have one of these signs up before the enforced toll area begins, to remind drivers what they have their transponder set to, in case they "forgot" to set it properly.

Still better would be for the transponder to beep once for the 1-person setting, twice for the 2-person setting, etc., although this could get a bit annoying.

jeffbee2• 4 years ago

The newest transponders (since 2020) don't ever beep, because they are totally passive and have no battery.

modeless• 4 years ago

Thanks, I was wondering why my new one didn't beep. No battery makes so much more sense.

Bud6• 4 years ago

Cool, I didn't know the details of that.

fotta2• 4 years ago

You can also add your license plate number to your Fastrak account so if you don't have the transponder in your car it'll just charge back to your account via the plate. Obviously doesn't work if you want to carpool.

spike0215• 4 years ago

I've been really frustrated by this change, especially on 237. I used to drive in the faster lane on weekdays around noon to get around slower traffic by myself because that was legal. Now I'd need to pay for the privilege.

If I were confident that at least the money would go to road surface maintenance, I'd be partially okay with it. But I'm not, so this is even more ridiculous.

101 has some incredibly bad road surface stretches. 237 is 2 or 3 lanes for most stretches, and periodically there will be clusters of cars going 5-10mph under the limit and now I can't pass them unless I want to pay a Fastrak fee.

Mind-boggling, except that they know people here can "afford" it so they think it gives them free-reign to charge.

downrightmike4• 4 years ago

When stuck in between and immovable object and an unstoppable force, yield. IE stop driving so much. I've cut my driving down 90% and I am happier, its crazy how driving makes people upset.

cscurmudgeon• 4 years ago

Not everyone has that luxury. What if you are not rich enough to live near work or your kids school?

Just walk/bike/etc. is a form let them eat cake.

spike0215• 4 years ago

So I can take a train with my dog up the 280 corridor?

Ah, right. Caltrain is only on the inside, 101 corridor; also, last I checked it doesn't allow non-service animals. So...

ripper1138• 4 years ago

It does seem like they are slowly resurfacing 101. Some sections have a mix of old/new like some lanes have been resurfaced recently. But who knows if that’s paid for by fast lane tolls or not.

fragmede• 4 years ago

There's been heavy traffic around 11pm on weekdays for said resurfacing.

spike0215• 4 years ago

I bet they still haven't figured out a fix for the area around the Old Oakland Rd. exit/overpass. IIRC the water table is technically above the road, so any time there's rain that section floods; in addition to that, it also constantly has terrible potholes and they appear almost as quickly as some are fixed.

jxramos3• 4 years ago

I think the difference is that the 101 is a state highway, 237 is a county highway.

classichasclass5• 4 years ago

CA 237 is a state highway. https://cahighways.org/ROUTE237.html

US 101 in that stretch is actually part of the National Highway System and gets federal funding, though notionally all US highways are state highways with a national grid number.

kccqzy• 4 years ago

County highways are named with a letter followed by a number. For example Lawrence Expressway is G2. You can see the faded G2 sign at the exit from 237. https://goo.gl/maps/NGaa56Qkb9a8hzXg8

BurningFrog4• 4 years ago

The main advantage of pay lanes is that they're fast, and can handle a lot of traffic.

With a price, supply and demand can meet where traffic isn't jammed into standstill, and everyone is better off.

Sure, it would make sense for the money to go to road maintenance, but to me that's a minor issue.

kelnos9• 4 years ago

I don't see why we have these pay lanes at all. If you choose to drive rather than finding an alternative (our admittedly not-great transit system, moving so you live closer to work, etc.[0]), why should you be allowed to pay for the ability to externalize that choice? It just ends up being a regressive tax, and the people who can't afford it end up paying with their time.

Just designate one or two lanes as un-tolled HOV3 to encourage carpooling and leave it at that. Direct the funds for road-widening and toll schemes toward improving public transit.

Personal travel around the bay area (regardless of whether it's by car, bus, train, or boat) is abysmally embarrassing. Everything done since I moved here 18 years ago have been ineffectual band-aids.

[0] Yes, I know these options aren't available to everyone, at least not without significant personal or financial sacrifice, but I bet enough people to make a difference could actually make some useful changes.

cbhl2• 4 years ago

I remember asking about this at one of the community meetings in Redwood City for the San Mateo 101 Express Lanes project. Projections at the time showed a clear trend in increased car traffic on the 101, and thus even HOV lanes would have the same traffic jams as the regular lanes. They couldn't even keep the express lanes as HOV 2+; they needed to change it to 3+ in order to ensure a minimum travel speed of 35mph during rush hour.

That said I do find it amusing that if you drive up the I-5 up to Oregon, people suddenly know to keep the left lane clear as a passing lane as soon as you cross into Oregon. (But cross back into California and the _exact same cars_ in your pack will suddenly coast slowly in the leftmost lane.)

pishpash3• 4 years ago

Maybe they ticket that behavior in Oregon?

jonnycomputer• 4 years ago

By making cheating public, but without the public being able to punish defectors, you might actually increase the number of people who cheat, especially if they don't see them getting caught. Sometimes you don't want to give up ambiguity.

formerkrogeremp• 4 years ago

As someone who's never heard of FasTrack before, this all sounds a little dystopian. In my state, we don't have toll roads, but our roads are pretty awful.

boobsbr• 4 years ago

It gives off "Snow Crash" vibes.

mataug• 4 years ago

I know its easier said than done, but gosh this is some absurd complexity for dealing with a problem of congestion, wouldn't it just be cheaper/safer/simpler/eco-friendly to offer better+faster public transport in the long run ?

These kinda solutions just feel like band-aids on top of band-aids when what is really needed are sutures(stitches) ?

I'm curious though, are there startups trying to solve this problem of public transport ? Just like the many startups focused on trying to perfect self-driving cars.

PS self-driving cars cannot solve traffic congestion

ultimoo• 4 years ago

Building better+faster public transport brings orders of magnitude of absurd complexity, compared to implementing something like this. I do agree that public transit solves many of these problems in the long run, and I hope we get there some day.

ridaj2• 4 years ago

Why bother! In 10 years in California I have never seen anyone get pulled over for carpool lane violations, but pretty much every time I'm on the road, I witness one.

willidiots• 4 years ago

Exactly. The whole system seems hilariously naïve if you have any real-world driving experience in the bay area.

I drove 205/580->680->880->237 daily for years, one of the first express corridors. People constantly crossing over the double-white line, intentionally exiting the lane at each transponder to skip tolls, driving on the shoulder, driving past a huge line of cars so they can bully their way in at the last moment. CHP seems to let most of that slide - they're busy with the massive accidents that constantly result.

I highly doubt they're going to care about 1 vs 2 vs 3, and I feel for them if they're expected to.

ryandrake• 4 years ago

The last two years have shown us that people will routinely and casually break the rules merely to avoid mild discomfort, even while lives are on the line and people are dying. I don’t see how these voluntary transponders are even remotely effective.

BurningFrog4• 4 years ago

How can you tell what cars get pulled over for?

mywittyname• 4 years ago

Presumably, OP rarely sees anyone pulled over. So cause is irrelevant.

rconti• 4 years ago

You've really gotta try to get pulled over here. I just broke my streak, been in the Bay Area for 20 years but finally got pulled over last year. First time ever interacting with police at the side of the road in California. 20 years.

Lest you think I'm a saint, I got 4 tickets the year I moved away from Seattle alone.

fshbbdssbbgdd5• 4 years ago

I think this system should improve enforcement. Now, the state will bill you for driving on the lane with an automated system. They can bill every single person in the lane. It doesn’t depend on the police prioritizing the issue anymore.

gkop• 4 years ago

No. If you choose 3 you don’t get billed. This is a scenario clearly described in the article .

themodelplumber• 4 years ago

I've seen at least a 4-5 cars pulled over for carpool violations in norcal, usually in considerable traffic. Cathartic event really. One time there was a lot of cheers from other cars and horns honking.

On a normal day it can be tough to tell why people are getting pulled over though. You'd have to be able to observe the conditions and watch them get pulled over which is a pretty short window given the attention & timing factors.

genocidicbunny• 4 years ago

Anecdotally, I've heard from many people that in pre-pandemic traffic on the peninsula, the occasional carpool ticket was worth it for the time savings they got from taking the carpool lane. Carpool lane violations don't accrue points, so there's no insurance hikes or potential to lose your license. Especially with things like Waze being available, in slow-moving traffic cops didn't change their positions often and so you could fairly reliably avoid being in violation when you were in sight of them.

kelnos9• 4 years ago

This just tells me that I think all our anecdotes here are useless. I haven't done the peninsula commute thing for a while (10+ years), but for the 6 years when I did, I cannot remember even one instance of seeing someone obviously pulled over for a carpool violation. (Granted, it can be hard to tell, as you say.)

I wonder if there are public stats on this. How many people are cited? Can we estimate the total number of violations somehow to get a rough percentage of people who actually get caught?

dekhn• 4 years ago

I was pulled over for a carpool violation (101S, driving in the HOV lane with a single passenger). It does happen.

gscott• 4 years ago

This guy went to extreme lengths and was pulled over.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-02-26/driver-u...

bduerst3• 4 years ago

As someone who used to drive electric in the HOV lane through Emeryville CA, I've seen many people get busted.

Conversely, driving the same through the peninsula I never saw any. It seems to be up to the discretion of the county/local cops to enforce, which isn't a conviction of the rule itself but really the enforcing authority.

godman_82• 4 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20220310040354/http://rachelbyth...

ta9882• 4 years ago

Any reason you are archiving it?

godman_82• 4 years ago

It wasn't loading for me, figured I'd share if others were having the problem.

ma2rten• 4 years ago

How does this work for clean air vehicles? Do they still need the transponder?

01100011• 4 years ago

Yes. You need a CAV tag. I started applying for one and then I noticed they wanted to pre-charge my credit card $25. I may not use an HOV lane for months and yet they want to take my money now for some reason.

jxramos3• 4 years ago

I can't make heads or tails of why fasttrack has those messages "Tolling Begins Spring 2021", "Tolling Begins Spring 2022". Is this is a deliberately misleading message to get people to think that the system is not fully deployed and that the public is getting a courtesy heads up to start watching their lanes soon because they will be charged once the tolling actually begins? The tolling has already begun, why do they bother displaying these messages?

pishpash3• 4 years ago

Has it actually begun?

CogitoCogito5• 4 years ago

I feel like a simpler system would be to just charge the same for vehicles using these lanes regardless of occupants. A higher cost will incentivize more occupants anyway. Of course in that system there would be no HOV lane incentive to drive electric vehicles, but so what? They have already been subsidized through tax breaks and we could always incentivize them further by increasing gas taxes. It just seems to me that a system like this is trying to incentivize different things and letting enforcement get to complicated. Just keep it simple and it won't be so bad. I think the point of these lanes should be to improve traffic flow by increasing the number of occupants in the cars. Electric vehicles simply do not achieve that.

That said in a way I don't think this system is too terrible. It's a little funny, but it's at least fairly simple. But it requires enforcement. I've done a lot of driving throughout California recently and it seems like half the people in carpool lanes shouldn't be there. And apparently I'm the last person in the state that doesn't roll across the solid double lanes whenever I feel like it. Never have I seen a cop care about this stuff.

gridspy2• 4 years ago

Both tolls or the requirement to have an "expensive car" (electric) quickly become discrimination against poor people. Possibly unintentional discrimination.

I think it should be simple occupancy based only - vehicles with 3 occupants or more only.

dublinben• 4 years ago

Scarce goods being expensive isn't discriminatory. Even if it were, the most direct way to address it would be to just give money to people who lack it, or offer a means-tested discount.

"Poor people" already drive less than higher income people, are more likely to depend on public transportation and suffer the consequences of living near polluted highways. They will disproportionately benefit from anti-congestion policies like tolling highway lanes.

lancesells• 4 years ago

Electric car or not shouldn't there always be an incentive for extra occupants? Those cars require a huge amount of resources to make and run. Personally, I think even the tax breaks are off. The biggest tax breaks should be from not owning a car at all. The second is probably not buying a new car because you're not using additional resources. Then maybe new electric cars followed with hybrids.

CogitoCogito5• 4 years ago

Electric car or not shouldn't there always be an incentive for extra occupants? Those cars require a huge amount of resources to make and run. Personally, I think even the tax breaks are off. The biggest tax breaks should be from not owning a car at all. The second is probably not buying a new car because you're not using additional resources. Then maybe new electric cars followed with hybrids.

I responded to a similar comment above, but I'll repeat it here. If we want people to share the same vehicle in those lanes we should probably just close it to everything but buses during rush hour and then actually put more buses on the road.

Melatonic11• 4 years ago

I do not think that would work - the charge for the toll is just not enough to really incentivize carpooling on its own.

I agree some enforcement could improve things but then again I would guess this still increases carpooling just by the fact that most people do not want to worry about breaking the rules.

An interesting enforcement option might be to create a fastrack app or integrate even with Waze / other apps where each person in the car has to confirm they are where they say there are. It wouldnt need to be running a full constant GPS like navigating with turn by turn - just a few GPS pings at the start of your trip to confirm you are all in the same vehicle (or even by a quick local bluetooth ping of each others phones)

CogitoCogito5• 4 years ago

I do not think that would work - the charge for the toll is just not enough to really incentivize carpooling on its own.

I guess if I'm honest I think the whole scheme is a silly way of getting people to share vehicles. Really we should probably just take the carpool lanes and make them exclusively usable by buses during rush hour and actually build out that form of transportation.

m4633• 4 years ago

I've been pondering carpool lanes and wonder why we have them at all.

- they are very unsafe. pretty much danger is proportional to the speed difference between stopped traffic and the carpool lane.

- people pay extremely high taxes to use the roads in the first place, why monetize further?

- just opening the lane would decrease congestion for everyone

- all that new infrastructure to track and charge people costs money, how much overhead is there?

lkbm• 4 years ago

- people pay extremely high taxes to use the roads in the first place, why monetize further?

Monetize further = reduce needed taxes.

- just opening the lane would decrease congestion for everyone

This is true iff they don't incentivize carpooling.

matthewfcarlson• 4 years ago

I think carpool lanes are for public transportation. We just don’t have have volume to justify a whole lane so we let in other yahoos. It makes a huge diffidence in Seattle knowing the bus takes an hour and driving by myself would take an hour and a half. However, if I paid 15$ in tolls I could get there in 30 minutes.

uoaei3• 4 years ago

just opening the lane would decrease congestion for everyone

Adding lanes adds demand, and you get just as much (usually more!) congestion as before.

bduerst3• 4 years ago

Several of your questions can be answered here on the San Mateo county page:

https://ccag.ca.gov/us-101-express-lanes-project/

There's an effect called induced demand where adding more free lanes to a road actually increases congestion, not decrease. Traffic engineers in the bay area have studied this and found it would be the effect if they just opened the HOV lanes up to all traffic.

A toll expressway allows for relieving congestion on normal lanes without increasing road demand, and will pay for itself over time.

cortesoft• 4 years ago

So the entire (original) purpose of carpool lanes is to reduce the number of cars on the road. The idea is that if three people are driving in one car instead of in three separate cars, that is two less cars on the road. In aggregate, this should speed up the commute for everyone, even people who don't use the carpool lane. Sure, you are giving up a lane, but in return you are removing 3x the number of vehicles from the remaining lanes for every car in the carpool lane.

As for your speed difference issue, at least in Southern California, the carpool lane has a double yellow separating it from the regular lanes, hopefully giving some added safety since cars shouldn't move back and forth except at designated entry and exit sections.

A lot of people think the purpose is to reduce pollution from the cars removed from the road (i.e. only one car's pollution instead of three), but in reality it should reduce pollution even MORE than that (because fewer cars on the road means everyone can drive faster, reducing the time spent with your car polluting while stuck in traffic).

However, they messed this up by adding these other ways to drive in the carpool lane. Sure, an electric vehicle pollutes less, but letting them drive in the carpool lane eliminates the benefit of fewer cars on the road; three electric vehicles still take up the same amount of space on the road and cause the same traffic as three gas guzzlers.

Then they added paying a toll, which does nothing to reduce pollution at all, and is simply a way to generate revenue. This is completely counter to the original purpose.

So if they stuck to the original idea, I think it is worthwhile. In the original form, converting the carpool lane to a regular lane would not actually reduce the congestion for everyone, because while you are adding a lane, you are also increasing the number of cars on the road (of course there are a lot of factors that go into this... how many cars would carpool anyway, and how many cars are using the carpool lane at any one time).

Here in Southern California, however, the carpool lanes are almost pointless. During high traffic times, they are just as congested as the regular lanes. In fact, they are often times slower than the regular lanes when congestion is medium... since they are only one lane and you can't switch lanes during most sections, you can end up with one slower car holding back everyone.

CalRobert• 4 years ago

A monetized lane is a godsend when you're late and need to get where you're going as fast as possible.

Handytinge2• 4 years ago

For anyone else not North American, "HOV" stands for "High Occupancy Vehicle".

mrsuprawsm4• 4 years ago

This system seems quite stupid. Surely the expenditure could be better invested in public transit. Not only is public transit orders of magnitude more effective in terms of people moved per hour, it's also much more equitable.

scarby22• 4 years ago

I'm not sure about the 101 project in SF but we have exactly this in southern california and believe it or not it's been great. They integrated the HOV lanes into a Bus Rapid Transit system and use demand pricing to ensure that the lanes almost always stay moving.

AFAIK the project expenditure is covered by people who want to get there faster. In this case the city/Metro gets to deploy more public transit without having to pay for it, and without having to charge riders more money. There are plans for expansion of the system as it's been very popular.

gridspy2• 4 years ago

Perhaps it reflects the transport choices of the lawmakers. They spend more time frustrated on the 101 than they spend attempting to use a bus or train.

mrsuprawsm4• 4 years ago

That could well be the case, and I would personally argue that that is a good part of the problem.

For example, in Europe, it's quite normal for lawmakers to cycle or take public transport to the office. Obviously, some/most of it is performative to present a public image of the politician as a "man of the people", but it does expose them to the problems of the lay person as opposed to sitting in a chauffeured car.

Needless to say, our public transport systems (and cycling) are much more sane, affordable, and efficient options here. They are by no means perfect, but they are a damn good way to get around in most cities.

It doesn't mean you can't or don't drive, but often driving is massively slower or less convenient (especially inside the urban core), so you jump on the metro/train/tram or bicycle to get where you need to be.

qbasic_forever• 4 years ago

The public doesn't want to fund mass transit with higher taxes, etc. so we get these toll systems. Up in Seattle there are similar mixed toll and high occupancy vehicle lanes that were built to help fund expansion of light rail systems, bridges, etc.

mrsuprawsm4• 4 years ago

I think it's important to emphasis that this is only the American public. Many other countries _do_ prefer to fund public transport with general taxation. And things are much saner as a result: high quality public transport and bike lanes, without arcane rules around transponders and specific highway lanes.

techsupporter• 4 years ago

in Seattle there are similar mixed toll and high occupancy vehicle lanes that were built to help fund expansion of light rail systems

Tolls from the express toll lanes or on state routes like 520 and 167 don't pay for the transit system in Puget Sound. The long and short of why is that because funding indirectly comes from the motor vehicle fuel tax account, at least as backing for the bonds, the state constitution prohibits spending the money on anything but roads.

The closest you can get is that part of the ETL projects on I-405/SR 522 will build a full ETL pathway that bus rapid transit can use as part of Sound Transit's STRIDE network from Renton to Bothell, but that's only for transit insofar as public transit vehicle operators don't have to pay tolls.

(Washington State contributed, until the pandemic and assuming Move Washington passes, $0.00 to Puget Sound transit agencies. The state legislature insists that transit is a local issue. The state kicked in some money to local agencies to help during the pandemic but the bulk of that money was supplied by the federal government as part of stimulus bills. If Move Washington passes, it will be the first time the state funds any transit operations west of the Cascades in over a decade.)

unreal37• 4 years ago

Even if this system cost $20 million to set up, how much public transit does that buy you? 100 feet of subway track? 20 buses? 1 mile of streetcar track?

Transit is way more expensive than any cameras.

fennecfoxen3• 4 years ago

100 feet of subway track? I wish I could get those rates. NYC's latest Second Avenue Subway budget is $6.3 billion for 1.5 miles, or, about $800,000 a foot. You can get 25 feet of subway track.

California's not quite that bad, but, it's close to that bad. The Downtown Extension for Caltrain is $3 billion for a mile. SF's Central Subway is $923 million a mile. So sure, you can get about 114 feet of subway, but it'll be the short little LRVs and not like BART or anything nice-ish.

geraldwhen• 4 years ago

None of your numbers are correct. Buses will be more than a million per bus, plus the cost of hiring drivers. You would be lucky to get 10 buses.

Melatonic11• 4 years ago

These systems are designed to be making money which then (theoretically) should go back into transport infrastructure. I agree we need more public transit - but keep in mind (generally) along this exact same route Caltrain provides some very good and very clean service already. I would really love to see that service extended all the way around the bay.

cbhl2• 4 years ago

When I went to the planning meeting for the San Mateo 101 Express Lanes project in Redwood City, these lanes _were_ seen as an investment in mass transit. The tech shuttles will use these Express Lanes instead of sitting in mixed traffic, taking load off of the Caltrain (which, pre-pandemic, was at capacity during rush hour and needs electrification and grade separation work to run more frequent trains). Also, constituents in bay area dislike public-transit-only investments (see San Mateo's historical rejection of the BART proposal).

ctime• 4 years ago

1) I drove from San Mateo to Sunnyvale daily for years pre-pandemic using the HOV lane (Took a bus, carpooled etc) . So happy to not live in the Bay Area anymore (for many reasons, but that aside) - that commute would be absolutely awful now assuming everyone goes back to the office and everything goes back to normal. It used to take 45 mins anyways on busy days with the carpool lane. I'm not convinced everything will really ever be back to normal in the bay area and full RTO is a pipe dream (also an aside), but that traffic will still be a mess because bay area.

Now everyone can pay to play and probably only buses will ever be able to use it (plus all the cheaters! - cheaters are everywhere). Note that one of the "selling points" of the express lanes was that during peak congestion, the HOV lane becomes "Bus Only" to give preference to the most effecient mode of transport (8+ passenger busses/vans iirc)

2) If you have a Clean Air Vehicle, you need to order a special CAV toll tag to avoid paying full fees. Some freeways are still free, others will give you a discount. This link has the full details

https://www.bayareafastrak.org/en/support/clean-air-vehicle....

fshbbdssbbgdd5• 4 years ago

Congestion pricing is one of those policies that can greatly benefit society, but causes so much anger that it’s very hard to implement.

brimble• 4 years ago

I think it bothers people when they're not getting to choose when or where they drive, which is much of the time (commute, taking kids to school, that kind of thing). It feels like being punished for decisions other people made.

autoexec5• 4 years ago

I don't think punishing people for wanting to get somewhere is a benefit for society. Congestion is a failure of the infrastructure to efficiently meet demand, not the fault of people for simply wanting things when others also want them.

Instead of punishing individuals who already suffer by being stuck using ineffective systems that can't handle the load, a far better solution would be updating those systems or replacing them with something that can adequately handle the traffic at its peak.

fshbbdssbbgdd5• 4 years ago

Certainly, we should upgrade our infrastructure to improve capacity. Due to induced demand, there will still be traffic at peak times. Congestion pricing can shape demand to improve utilization and reduce travel times, which improves the ROI of those investments.

bduerst3• 4 years ago

The difference in the costs of the solutions you're talking about are to the order of many magnitudes.

Congestion pricing is a quick fix that is not a punishment, because everyone would be waiting in traffic anyways. Opening up the extra lanes to all would only increase wait times for all with induced demand.

But like GP said, the fix especially angers people.

sly010• 4 years ago

This happened to me. I am unfamiliar with the area, the rental company didn't mention it so I ended up receiving a ticket for not setting my transponder correctly. They even send my a picture on the ticket clearly showed me and my wife (2 people!) in the car. I ended up contesting it and they dropped it (first offense I guess). I bet they are relying on the fact that most people will not fight it. It's a stupid system.

hereforphone• 4 years ago

California is a confusing place to drive. Trying to find out how to pay tolls online was confusing. One bridge had a "stop and pay tolls!" sign, but no one was stopping, and I found out later they issue the toll online. This was all mostly in the Bay area on a recent visit.

bubblethink2• 4 years ago

The fast track on 101 is such a scam. The old HOV lanes were free during off-peak hours. Fast track is 5 AM to 8 PM. You'll see a few miles of bumbper to bumper traffic around Palo Alto while the fast track lanes are empty in the afternoon.

Melatonic11• 4 years ago

Yea this is a bit of a crapshoot. Weren't the old HOV lanes not THAT different though in hours?

At least its not like Orange County where they have WHOLE FREEWAYS that are fastrack ONLY. All day, everyday, with no free lanes in sight.

bubblethink2• 4 years ago

Old HOV lanes were 7 AM - 9 AM and 4 PM - 7 PM or something like that. So outside of those hours, everything was pretty load balanced, which makes sense. This move seems to be more about revenue maximization than reducing traffic. They haven't even completed the full stretch from SF to south bay, but once they do, it would cost about $10 to do that run. Add $5 in gas, and you are looking at $15 per trip, one-way. Tax dollars at work.

pishpash3• 4 years ago

Seems like they should lower the congestion toll there. Easy problem to observe and solve.

Melatonic11• 4 years ago

We have had these same transponders in the Los Angeles area for years and years but I do not think they do this with the number - I always thought it seemed odd that there was almost no accountability to cheating the system.

Also - does the CHP even have time to enforce this? At least where I live they are plenty busy with more pressing matters. But maybe on the Peninsula they have more time.

As someone who grewup in the Bay Area and now lives in Los Angeles I thought it was funny when she talked about how to tell the invaders (based on how they say either "101" or "the 101"). The better test for this (in my opinion) is if someone says they live / work in "the valley" or the peninsula. If someone says "the 101" that just means they are from socal vs somewhere else. It always cracks me up when someone tries to humblebrag by saying "oh me? I live in The Valley" because the OG locals are internally rolling their eyes.

omoikane• 4 years ago

It always cracks me up when someone mentions "the 101" and then someone else would immediately respond "found the Southern Californian!" I thought this phrasing of "invaders" was a real gem.

Melatonic11• 4 years ago

Yea that was funny - the reason socal people say "the" before freeways is that for a long time many of them were officially labeled things like "the San Diego Freeway" (along with a number). So it just fell into place after that.

nextstep• 4 years ago

It’s incredible the lengths to which the US will go to duct tape together their 1950’s era, individual-rider transportation system. The solution is mass transit, but this offends the entrenched industries (auto companies and adjacent) that control the government so you get nonsense like this.

punnerud• 4 years ago

Why do you need a switch, you could have a webpage/app where you change the settings. That way you don’t have the hardware cost/risk.

They manage to give you instant feedback if you have paid your bill, so I don’t see why this could not work the same.

jandrese• 4 years ago

Who the hell wants to open up their phone and futz around with an app or the browser when someone else gets in the car? Plus you have to open it up to check the current setting. The physical switch is better.

anonymousiam5• 4 years ago

"How does the system know what to charge you? Well, you either have an old-style toll transponder that always bills you as a solo driver, or you have a new-style transponder with a 1/2/3+ switch that tells the road how to handle you. "

I have two "old-style" transponders with a 1/2/3+ switch, and one "new-style" passive RFID tag/sticker that has no switch, so I have no idea how they are determining what to charge me. Perhaps they are using AI/camera hardware to count the occupants now.

TechBro8615• 4 years ago

Or maybe you'll escape enforcement until they deprecate the current system and mandate the new-style transponder as part of your next vehicle registration renewal.

In general, there is little upside to being an early adopter of systems your creditors seem excited about — for examples, see: smart meters, EzPass lanes, facial recognition for taxpayer identity verification, etc. I prefer to stick with existing systems as long as possible...

JJMcJ• 4 years ago

+1 on calling out "The 101" as an LA-ism.

yeswecatan• 4 years ago

Can't you just put your Fastrak on 3+ and use HOV for free?

cbanek• 4 years ago

Ah yes, how could this fail you ask?

A friend of mine would use the carpool lanes on the 520 bridge in Seattle, where there's a pretty strictly enforced 3+ carpool lane (so that the bus can jump the traffic), she would routinely get pulled over for not having enough people in her car.

Once the cop looks back at the driver though, they realize there's two babies in car seats in the back. Happened to her all the time.

Stratoscope3• 4 years ago

The funniest express lane sign I've seen is at the entrance to northbound 101 from San Antonio Road in Mountain View. When I drove by, it read (paraphrased) "Toll to Embarcadero: $1.30".

Embarcadero Road (and Oregon Expressway) is the very next exit. The San Antonio entrance puts you directly onto the exit-only lane for Embarcadero/Oregon. This lane is 1.2 miles from entrance to exit, and it's rarely backed up even if the rest of the freeway is, as there is no stoplight after you get off the freeway.

So most rational drivers making that short trip just stay in the exit-only lane.

But now the sign tells me I can use the express lane for $1.30! What a deal. In the space of 1.2 miles, I can cut across four lanes of traffic to get to the express lane, and then cut back across four lanes again to barely make the exit.

This will make me a popular driver, won't it?

jedberg4• 4 years ago

That sign isn't for you, it's for the people already in the lane to know how much the next section costs.

Stratoscope3• 4 years ago

This isn't one of those big overhead signs above the express lanes, it's a little sign at eye level to the right of the onramp, before you get onto the freeway. It's only visible to drivers entering the freeway from San Antonio.

That's what made it so funny: it listed the one toll trip you would never take from there.

I think I recall that "Embarcadero" was in the display and not painted on, so they could fix it to give a more practical destination.

jedberg4• 4 years ago

My friend is in Highway Patrol. He absolutely hates these lanes because they are impossible to enforce for this very reason. There are a ton of rules and exemptions and he has to try and verify that the number on the sign matches the number of people in the car in a split second.

He basically admitted to me that it's based on the honor system, he has no real way to enforce that the number is correct unless it's a convertible with the top down.

Southern California has it too, but they call it "the" 101

I moved here 26 years ago but I still call it "the 101" (but I call all the other freeways by just their number, except the 5 because we have that in SoCal too). So yeah, I guess you can use it to detect I learned to drive in LA, but I've lived more than 1/2 my life here, so if I'm an invader, I'm definitely playing the long con!

Stratoscope3• 4 years ago

And then if your friend makes that call, he has to conduct a traffic stop. On the freeway!

So in the interest of penalizing someone who committed no safety infraction, only a financial one, we create a dangerous situation for everyone on the freeway, including the officer.

In 1998, California Highway Patrol officer Scott Greenly was struck by a car and killed while issuing a ticket on the shoulder of Route 85; thereafter the portion between Quito Road and Prospect Road in the City of Saratoga was named the CHP Officer Scott M. Greenly Memorial Freeway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_85#Othe...

Regarding "the 101", I always wondered why it's "101" here and "the 101" in SoCal. According to an article I read, it's because the original Los Angeles area freeways didn't have numbers, just names: the Pasadena Freeway, the Ventura Freeway, etc. It only made sense to use "the". When they got numbers later, the habit of using "the" stuck around.

In the Bay Area, the freeways got numbers first. They do have names too (like the stretch of 85 mentioned above), but mostly no one uses their names or even know them. So there never was a habit of using "the" with the number.

jedberg4• 4 years ago

I was always told by people outside of LA that the reason was because in LA the freeways are so important they're revered like religious idols so they get the definite article. But my parents grew up through the transition you describe and back up what you said, that they all had names before numbers.

I was a kid in the early 80s and back then all the traffic reports on the radio were still by freeway name, so I learned them all that way too.

kart23• 4 years ago

I don't know about that. In socal, everyone says "the 5", but also omits "the" for PCH.

Rebelgecko2• 4 years ago

The FastTrak lanes operated by Los Angeles Metro (the 10 and 110) are testing facial recognition cameras that can supposedly do the same job and ticket people automatically. I'm a little skeptical (on top of the privacy implications, there's practical ones: how well will they work when your passenger is reclining in the last row of a van with tinted windows? Or a child in a car seat facing backwards?), but we'll see how the pilot goes over the coming months.

jedberg4• 4 years ago

Yeah they won't be able to see my baby facing backwards in the carseat or my mother in law in the back row of the van. That will really only work for cars with one row of seats.

us0r2• 4 years ago

I am 99.99% sure right before covid I read (and saw them installing something) they were using some kind of heat or thermal reading on the 110. Me being curious I always set my transponder to 2 and turned on my passenger seat warmer on after that. Never got anything in the mail.

cgriswald• 4 years ago

I am not a lawyer of any kind and this is not legal advice. I'm merely speculating based on my past experience with other tickets on how I might handle the hypothetical scenario being discussed.

It's up to the state to prove their case. I'd contest any such ticket with the truth. Likely these systems are profitable because people don't generally contest the ticket (or do so in ineffectual ways). Neither the private company nor the state wants any judge making a ruling that makes such tickets impossible to enforce. I'd expect it would get dropped before I'd ever have to talk to a judge, but even if not, unless they have clear evidence I am lying, they're probably going to lose in court.

eyeareque• 4 years ago

I am curious what happens if you modify the transponder to send something other than 1,2,3?

icodestuff• 4 years ago

The express lanes on 580 do this too, but with one, two, or three lights, instead of a numeral.

us0r2• 4 years ago

I just learned about "confidential plates" the other day. Interesting read.

https://sdrostra.com/1-5-million-private-ca-cars-have-ticket....

Toll signs on 101 report your transponder setting

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