Last week my wife and I decided to out to dinner at a restaurant on Windy Hill Road in Cobb County. We left midtown Atlanta in the middle of evening rush hour and started up Interstate 75 northbound. Traffic was really jammed and started to slow just south of West Paces Ferry. Luckily, we were able to use the HOV lane. Apparently, we were the only ones able to use the HOV lane. It was empty. As a result we were able to go the speed limit all the way to Interstate 285 while the rest of the commuters were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
While my wife and I were very happy to avoid the jam, it made me realize how under-utilized the HOV lane is. No one was carpooling. No one was able to use the HOV lane. All those single passenger vehicles caused miles of wasted, underused pavement.
That leads me to the HOT-Express Lanes on Interstate 85 in Gwinnett County. For years when the lanes were HOV lanes and not HOT lanes, they were woefully underused. Why? Simply put, Georgians have not embraced the notion of carpooling.
I get it.
We want to drive our own cars. We don’t want to be “held hostage” by our carpooling partners. We want the freedom of being able to leave work whenever we want. I totally understand. I’m not sure I’d want to carpool if I worked normal human hours and had to sit in traffic every day.
Now that the HOV lanes on I-85 have been changed to HOT lanes, people are actually using them! They are becoming so well used, the price to drive in lane has been rising, reaching a record $8 to travel the whole distance between Old Peachtree Road and Shallowford Road last week.
There has been a tremendous amount of backlash about the lanes from commuters who don’t use them. What these critics don’t realize is that for every car or truck that uses the HOT lane, that’s one less car clogging up the regular travel lanes. The more people that use the HOT lane, the better the regular lanes will move.
I have no doubt in my mind that if the HOT lane on I-85 was still an HOV lane, traffic would be worse driving through Gwinnett and Dekalb counties.
The bottom line is there is less wasted pavement now on I-85 than there was before the HOT lanes started. When the lanes were high occupancy only, just select commuters could use them. Now anyone can use them, including single drivers.
No one is forcing you to use them, but they are there just in case.
Soon the HOT lanes will be there along Interstate 75 and I expect them to continue to expand to other areas in metro Atlanta. You might not like them, you may never use them, but coming from someone who monitors traffic patterns for a living, they help eliminate wasted pavement and in turn help traffic move more smoothly.
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