Planners seek HOV lane inputDOT exploring special lanes between Summerville and Charleston By Tony Bartelme (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
The Post and Courier HOV? HOT? Or NOT? With I-26 traffic growing worse every year, state transportation planners want to know what you think about creating high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) or high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes on the highway between Summerville and Charleston. To gauge public opinion about the concepts, the Transportation Department has scheduled four public meetings and plans to put a survey on its Web site. "Part of our daily business is to look for any solutions that would incur the least expense to the taxpayers," said Secretary of Transportation H.B. "Buck" Limehouse Jr. "Even if the eventual outcome shows that HOV or HOT lanes are not practical in any locations around the state, we would not be doing our jobs if we didn't explore the possibilities." Common in many large cities, HOV lanes typically are reserved for vehicles carrying multiple passengers, such as buses or people in carpools. HOT lanes are less common and can be used by drivers traveling alone who wish to pay a toll for the use of a less congested lane. In many cases, commuters who carpool may still use the lane without paying a toll. Citing a Post and Courier report about I-26 congestion and the idea of creating a commuter train, South Carolina transportation officials recently asked for federal funding to study whether HOV and HOT lanes would make sense on I-26 between Summerville and Charleston. The online survey will be available starting Monday at www.scdot.org. Survey responses will be taken received until Oct. 22. Public meetings When: 6-7:30 p.m. Monday Where: Dorchester County Services Building, 500 N. Main St., Summerville When: 6-7:30 p.m. Tuesday Where: Goose Creek City Hall, 519 N. Goose Creek Blvd. When: 5:30-7 p.m. Sept. 25 Where: Armory Park, 5000 Lackawanna Blvd., North Charleston When: 5:30-7 p.m. Sept. 30 Where: Public library, 68 Calhoun St., Charleston Reach Tony Bartelme at 937-5554 or tbartelme@ postandcourier.com. |
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Comments
This article has 19 comment(s)
Posted by ForPnC on September 17, 2008 at 4:33 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Bad idea. As Stand stated there are too many cars at rush hour. If this happened I see most folks taking their chances on getting caught and riding the HOV lane solo or for passing.
I've got a good idea to help with traffic. Quit building crap that nobody wants anyway!
Posted by DoaMM on September 17, 2008 at 6:20 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Doesn't even work in the big cities, won't work here. The lanes in Atlanta are used as revenue enhancers.
A waste of time and money to bother with HOV lanes...IMO.
Posted by Riptide on September 17, 2008 at 6:46 a.m. (Suggest removal)
On the west coast they’re called diamond lanes and during rush hour traffic they don’t do much to alleviate congestion. Actually it has the reverse effect. You want as many cars to flow in a certain direction as possible. When you designate a diamond lane for car pooling, you increase the number of vehicles in the other lanes leaving the diamond lane with minimal use. It’s nothing unusual to see cars back up for miles on a normal commute and the diamond lane nearly empty.
The problem with car pooling is you need to find someone at your place of employment that lives in your neighborhood, start work about the same time and leave at the same time. With salary employees, different work schedules, different job requirements, vacations, overtime, job and family emergencies, etc. it’s going to be tough order to fill. I’ve seen people in a car pools waiting for an employee because his position or job requirements force him to stay longer at work due to an emergency. Having 3 people wait for another employee for an hour or so can discourage the best of intentions. Car pooling works only in the ideal world.
Posted by rutide on September 17, 2008 at 8:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I've seen places where HOV lanes work and places where they don't. Seattle Washington has dedicated lanes for HOV with their own ramps. New Jersey had just a lane marked for HOV and with so few car pooling and no results seen they did away with it just a few years after it started.
What I-26 and Charleston needs is more options, not just for transportation but for paths to work, places to work, and places to live so someone might be able to live in Mount Pleasant and work there, or live in a nice safe neighborhood in North Charleston near their job.
HOV Lanes are not the answer and I will be at one of these meetings to talk to the engineers.
Posted by jwabell on September 17, 2008 at 8:43 a.m. (Suggest removal)
How about spending taxpayers money on projects that benefit a wider range of the citizens, like widening Dorchester Road first, before wasting money on a unless HOV lane... Charleston has traffic, but not near the proportion to justify a HOV lane... rediculous. Come on...!
Posted by icbmman on September 17, 2008 at 9:43 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Very well said, Riptide.
I'm moving to Charlotte in the next month or so, and after driving on I-77, I see how worthless the HOV lane really is. If you're going to work, odds are that you will be traveling by yourself, considering all the factors that Riptide mentioned. Carpooling is good for taking kids in the same neighborhood to the same school, but carpooling to work is far less accomodating. While having more park and ride lots might help in carpooling, it is only a bandaid solution.
In addition to the lack of carpooling, HOV lanes actually screw up normal traffic flow. Slower-moving traffic drives in the right lane, faster-moving traffic flows in the middle lanes, and the far-left lane is for the fastest-moving traffic and/or a passing lane. If you have 8, regular lanes on either side of the freeway, traffic will have the maximum ability to move. However, if you take away the far-left lane to use for HOV, the ability for the fastest cars to pass is diminished. In addition, the HOV lane is not considered a passing lane, and many times you'll have cars going slow there, creating backup on that lane as well.
Forget the HOV lane idea. As others have said, it doesn't work in bigger cities, and it won't work here.
Posted by a_set_love on September 17, 2008 at 9:56 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The problem on I-26 is located squarely at the I-26/I-526 intersection. NoBama-08
Posted by iceman1978 on September 17, 2008 at 10:12 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Where I live the traffic isn't so much of an issue with the commute. I drive 20 miles from James Island to N Charleston to go to work and it takes about 1/2 hour. Sometimes it can be as little as 20 min and in bad weather it can take 45 min, but it's not nearly as bad as when I lived in Goose Creek.
An HOV lane might work if we had an eight-lane expressway like they have in Orlando or Tampa. All it would do here is clog up one lane since so few people carpool. Three of my co-workers live on James Island but carpooling wouldn't really work for us since we're not on the same schedule.
Instead of having an HOV lane I would have more bus routes connecting the different neighborhoods in the North Area with major work areas. The industrial complexes along Ashley Phosphate, the Northwoods Mall area, downtown hospitals, Westvaco and the Seaport are major destinations where people are commuting. Why not have more bus routes linking people's neighborhoods to these?
Posted by nikkiP on September 17, 2008 at 10:37 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Because Carta is already failing.
Every HOV lane I've encountered was typically empty. Which is odd, since so many people carpool. Are they that useless? More importantly, why do you have a sex doll ready in your car?
Posted by Missing_Home on September 17, 2008 at 10:50 a.m. (Suggest removal)
D.C., Fairfax,Virginia,Pentagon City.
All examples of HOV(<>) lanes that sit empty most of the day increasing the number of vehicles in the remaining lanes.
Posted by DoaMM on September 17, 2008 at 10:58 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The only way HOV lanes make sense is when there is an exit ramp to the left of the highway for EVERY exit offered on the right,
OR...
You make the HOV lane a true express lane, completely separated from the main highway, purposefully offering only limited exits or access back to the main highway.
Otherwise, you would have to fight your way through 3-4 lanes to GET TO the HOV lane, and then fight your WAY BACK through those same lanes to get to your exit.
Can people not see this?
Retarded, IMO.
Posted by onedeep on September 17, 2008 at 11:13 a.m. (Suggest removal)
DoaMM:
You read my mind. HOV lanes are not the way to go. What we need is a reversible express lane that runs from somewhere around the Summerville/College Park interchanges down to the Cosgrove interchange. Some might say that it needs an exit at 526, but that is where the problem is in the first place now. You get all the Summerville to Neck-area traffic into its own protected lane, and you are going to see traffic open up at the 526 interchange.
If they have room for two new lanes on either side, then they have room for one plus a shoulder in the middle.
Posted by DoaMM on September 17, 2008 at 11:42 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Oh, good Lord, Jimmy_Crackalicious!! My sides are splitting, Dude!
Posted by DoaMM on September 17, 2008 at 12:36 p.m. (Suggest removal)
J_C, you're moving closer and closer to segregation. That's not something we want here, buddy! It'll have to more simpler than you suggest:
White Cars in this lane, and Black Cars in the other.
Women in this lane, and Men here.
Baptists in the right lane, and Catholics behind the school buses.
Democrats in the Left Lane, and Republicans in the Right.
That's all you have to do and all the problems will be solved, right?
Posted by PalmettoDP on September 17, 2008 at 1:52 p.m. (Suggest removal)
In general I agree that HOV lanes don't work, but HOT lanes might be a good idea. However, to work well they would need to be physically separated from the other lanes, as well as have their own separate ramps connecting to I-526. If SCDOT is just going to paint a diamond in one lane, I say scrap this idea.
SCDOT should solicit proposals for a toll concession on new HOT lanes. If someone in the private sector has faith in them, HOT lanes could be built at no cost to taxpayers.
Posted by wjhamilton3 on September 17, 2008 at 4:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The I-26 improvements will be a waste. The State Ports Authority will consume all that extra lane capacity (costing 300 million dollars) on container truck traffic from their new Navy Base container terminal. They aren't planning to have functional freight railroad service to that terminal. They expect it all to go by truck. Their buddies all own trucking companies and they want a monopoly on the business.
Actually the CARTA express busses are now running full into the City in the Morning. They're pretty empty running back the other way because nearly noone lives in downtown Charleston and works at Super K Mart in North Charleston.
In Mt. Pleasant the inbound express bus is full of people going to College of Charleston and MUSC (ridership is up 200% over a year ago) but nearly empty going back out. The 40, which is the local bus has a lot of passengers both ways, but really full dropping people along Johnny Dodds Blvd. to get to work. The two buses serve different types of needs and they're loaded running in opposite directions at the same time. Express bus riders generally drive to a park and ride lot in their cars. Local bus riders generally don't have a car.
They did have HOV lanes in Seattle which were used by the busses. They have 250 bus routes, many of which feed into a five mile tunnel under the city which makes the busses even faster.
We can just wait for the price of gasoline to go back into the stratosphere and then there will be plenty of space on the road for the peopel who can still afford to drive. Progections are for about $200 a gallon in five years, down about 20 cents to two dollars thanks to our drilling the the Continental Shelf.
That means after you've purchased fifty gallons of gasoline at six dollars a gallon, drilling the shelf will save you enough to ride the CARTA bus.
I didn't see anybody at Chevy saying the Volt was going to be cheap or fast.
Don't worry technology and the Republicans will save us! Maybe John McCain will learn to use email and Sarah, after the investigation will learn not to.
Posted by icbmman on September 17, 2008 at 4:23 p.m. (Suggest removal)
wjhamilton3, why am I not surprised that you would turn this topic into ANOTHER political thread, ad nauseum? Please stop this nonsense about the voting; liberal solutions will only make our problems worse...what this discussion details is whether or not to make the additional lanes THAT ARE ALREADY PLANNED into HOV lanes?
Just judging from the consensus, I don't think anybody really wants HOV lanes. I-26 needs to be 8 lanes from downtown to Summerville, and they all should be open for every citizen to be utilized.
Posted by JohnS on September 17, 2008 at 5:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Waste of time and money. Why should all the taxpayers pay for a lane only a few could use?
Posted by ln1959 on September 18, 2008 at 3:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Missing Home..I agree with you. I am up here in that area, and the only time the HOV lanes really get used is on the off peak times. During rush hours, everything stop.