I-85 toll project to add to traffic jams in regular lanes

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By Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When a new toll system opens on I-85 in Gwinnett and DeKalb counties next week, solo drivers with cash should enjoy a quick ride.

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Starting Oct. 1, two-person carpools will no longer be allowed to use the high-occupancy lanes for free on this stretch of I-85.

Johnny Crawford, Jcrawford@ajc.com Starting Oct. 1, two-person carpools will no longer be allowed to use the high-occupancy lanes for free on this stretch of I-85.

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For the rest of the taxpayers who travel the lanes beside them, not so much.

In fact, it could be even worse. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution review of hundreds of pages of documents associated with the project and interviews with outside experts shows the project is expected to increase traffic in the regular lanes in order to to keep the HOV toll lane flowing.

The state’s own traffic and revenue study says the regular lanes are expected to gain up to 90 new vehicles per lane, per hour during rush hour, and at one location 120, making for traffic volumes of about 1,200 to 1,500 cars per hour in each lane.

However, the study insists drivers won't notice.

Sarah Tabares, who drives I-85 daily on the way to her job at a coffee house on Indian Trail Road, scoffed at the notion that adding yet more cars to the "parking lot" she encounters on the roadway won't make a difference she can feel. "They're full of [it]," she said. "I can tell what season we're in just by the traffic." And she doesn't understand why the state would fund a project that leaves most of the roadway's drivers in the lurch. "I think it defeats its purpose," she said.

While those general-lane drivers may be experiencing the downside of the $60 million toll project, as taxpayers they are still helping to fund it, since the toll lane is not expected to pay for itself, at least at first. In addition to the initial costs of building the project, the State Road and Tollway Authority estimates that over this fiscal year, the I-85 toll operations will cost about $4.8 million. SRTA expects the toll to bring in about $3.9 million in toll revenue its first year, to be supplemented by taxes and Ga. 400 toll revenues.

SRTA officials, the study and all experts interviewed noted that no one really knows what will happen to traffic once the lane opens Oct. 1, since such a project has never been tried exactly the same way before. But they point out that if the project works as expected, it will give even those drivers in the regular lanes something valuable: a reliable choice, in case of emergency, to step out of rush-hour traffic jams.

"Frankly, it offers an option,” said Gena Evans, director of the authority. "If you’re willing to hop in and pay a toll as a single-occupant vehicle, you can move at different speeds than you were in the general purpose lanes...all these tolling projects across the country, it’s strictly about giving consumers another way to use the roadway."

Evans noted that traditional methods of addressing congestion had failed to solve the problem reliably.

"We’ve been building and building and building," widening roads. "And you know where [land] costs are, you know where construction costs are, they’re so expensive right now." Enough drivers see it as useful that SRTA has been issuing about 1,000 Peach Passes a day, she said.

The added traffic to the general lanes may have several sources, but one is likely to be the two-person car pools that are no longer allowed to use the HOV lane for free under the tolling rules, and who as a consequence decide to switch to the main lanes rather than pay or take on a third carpool mate. Some may even split into two cars. Two-person carpools form the largest chunk of current HOV traffic, according to the state’s traffic study for the project, and displacing many of them out of the HOV lane is what makes room for the solo toll-payers while providing free-flowing traffic.

Computer programmer Ram Godthi said he and his wife, who live in Johns Creek and carpool twice a day in the I-85 HOV lane now, are headed to the regular lanes when the tolling starts. The project extends their entire 15-mile route from their I-85 entrance at Old Peachtree Road to work just inside the Perimeter. The toll will range from 10 cents to 90 cents per mile depending on congestion.

“It’s just too much, even though we’re paying all the taxes and everything,” he said. Moreover, he added, “Maybe we’ll drive two cars now. We make a lot of compromises driving only one car, it’s an inconvenience."

The toll lane, dubbed an "Express Lane," has fees that rise and fall along with congestion in the main lanes, with the price always aiming to stay high enough to keep traffic moving at at least 45 mph.

If the road were at maximum congestion the entire length of the route both ways, a full commute would cost more than $25 for one round trip, a price many drivers won't be willing to pay. The average toll driver will drive a shorter distance, only about six or seven miles, and would pay a maximum of 90 cents a mile. Many will pay no toll at all, since three-person carpools, motorcycles and mass transit vehicles ride free, if they're registered.

Many of the new toll drivers will come from the regular lanes, solo drivers who will switch now that they can. But according to the study, as they leave the regular lanes they will be slightly outweighed by the number of new drivers who take their place.

However, the study insists that their addition will cause “no discernible impact on travel” in the regular lanes or difference in “average” speeds there over four-hour peak periods – although it gives those “average” speeds in a wide range. Without the project, the congested rush hour sections would flow at zero to 35 mph, or at 35 mph to 45 mph when averaged over four hours, according to the study, and those ranges won’t change with the project. SRTA declined to provide more specific slowdown data, and Jacobs Engineering, which performed it, referred all questions to SRTA.

A national congestion expert, who produces the report Urban Mobility, said that the report’s conclusion that drivers won't be able to see a difference may mean that traffic is so bad already that drivers would probably never know what they were missing when the added cars slowed them down even a bit more.

“The addition of cars certainly has a slowdown effect,” said the expert, Tim Lomax, “but you’re already going pretty slow," and the slowdown might extend for a few more minutes but not bring the misery to a whole new level.