Carpool Lanes into Toll Lane, Will It Help The Congestion ?
The Federal Government have offered $213 Million dollars to Los Angeles‘ Transportion Department which is called MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) ONLY if MTA wants to convert some carpool lanes into the toll lanes in 3 of most busiest freeways which are I-10, I-210, and I-110. Will the congestion pricing help to reduce the congestion ? Sure it will discourage the motorists from using the toll lane which results the worsening congrestion in general purpose lanes as it already happened at Orange County and their CA-91 freeway that is equipped with 2 lanes (3 lanes in some streaches) toll lanes which already have resulted bumper-to-bumper traffic just like if its general purpose traffic congestion! My question is that, why do you want to waste the money if it only save you probably 15 to 20 minutes from the commute if its $10 for a 10 mile toll at the peak times ? I find it ridicious! What will really reduce the strain in the traffic congestion is to really invest into the mass transit, I mean, really heavily aggressively invest into it and grow the mass transit network to everywhere where the people needs to go including LAX (LAX does not have the reliable high speed mass transit at this moment of typing the post.) Having high speed mass transit will help, take a look at New York City, Chicago, they are moving really well because they have highly reliable mass transit unlike Los Angeles. So, the mass transit is deseperately needed, not just buses alone, I mean we need subways, el-trains, high speed rails, more light rails.



June 18th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Maybe they want to have those freeways changed to toll lanes to force people to use mass transit more. After all, if it starts costing people too much to drive, they will opt for mass transit.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Thats a possiblity but the biggest problem here in southern california….everything is so spread out which really forces you to rely on the car instead of the mass transit…..like if you want to go to disneyland form LAX, it takes 3 hours along with 3 to 5 mass transit transfers for a mere 1 hour drive by car.