|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
How to manage congestion on U.S Highway 101 in San Mateo County and northern Santa Clara County is the focus of two public meetings in San Mateo and Redwood City on May 31 and June 5.
A proposal being considered by transportation officials aims to provide a “continuous managed lane” in each direction on Highway 101 from the end of the express lanes in Santa Clara County to the intersection with Interstate Highway 380 in San Mateo County, near San Francisco International Airport. It could include carpool lanes (or high-occupancy vehicle lanes) or express lanes, which are carpool lanes that can also be accessed by paying a toll.
Goals include reducing congestion and improving travel time along the corridor as well as encouraging commuters to carpool and use transit.
A statement from the San Mateo County Transportation Authority says “finding a solution to the growing congestion and associated delays has become a high priority.”
The range of alternatives includes a combination of converting existing carpool lanes to express lanes, and the addition of new carpool or express lanes on Highway 101 between Whipple Avenue in Redwood City and the Highway 380 interchange.
The project may include removing or replacing existing auxiliary lanes between interchanges; reconstructing ramp connections to Highway 101; and installing electronic toll-collection infrastructure.
The first meeting is Wednesday, May 31, at 6:30 p.m. in San Mateo City Hall at 330 West 20th Ave., San Mateo. The second meeting is on Monday, June 5, at 6:30 p.m. in Redwood City’s City Hall at 1071 Middlefield Road in Redwood City.
The meetings will be hosted by the San Mateo County Transportation Authority, Caltrans and the City/County Association of Governments of San Mateo County (C/CAG).
Find more information here.
The important part is to get money from commuters for higher salaries, pensions and other benefits for transportation agency employees.
The best thing to do is to try and get cars off 101 by improving public transportation.
What happened about the VTA pilot of fast buses using carpool lanes from Gilroy and Morgan Hill to Mountain View?
We need these fast buses from outlying residential areas to Silicon Valley hubs where they are met by local shuttles.
We need fast buses to get to the airports, to cross Dumbarton and San Mateo bridges, to Daly City Bart. If Google can transport employees by fast, efficient buses from outlying areas as well as from San Francisco, then why can’t other operators do the same for the rest of us?
We need more innovative ideas and out of the box thinking when it comes to commuting around the Bay Area.
Clearly, local companies are expanding much faster than our infrastructure can support them. We need a higher payroll tax to pay for all the services that these workers use, like improved roads and public transit. These companies are making billions of dollars in revenue and can afford to put some of that back into their local communities.
In my view Toll Lanes – no matter what they’re called – increase congestion.
First, they increase congestion for the people in the other lanes. That’s another way of phrasing “encouraging commuters to carpool and use transit.” I think the better way to encourage people to use transit is to create better transit, but even if we improve transit there are people whose transportation requirements make public transit impractical. Think of the gardener who carries a lawnmower and other equipment in the back of his/her pickup truck. He/she will have to suffer the slowdown or pay up. Or there are the parents who must drive alone on the freeway to pick up their kids from school or soccer practice.
Second, toll lanes are designed to allow more people to commute in single-occupancy vehicles. Those are the people who will pay the tolls. If the traffic management systems work right, those toll-payers will glide comfortably up the freeway, but what happens when they pour off the freeway? They will jam surface roadways. Toll lanes would work against Mountain View’s transportation demand management programs, which are designed to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles.
The real attraction, to transit agencies, is that toll lanes could generate funds to improve public transit. But there is an alternative. Instead of extracting tolls from drivers already burdened by the high cost of working in Silicon Valley, we could tax the extremely wealthy corporations whose success is responsible for much of our traffic problems.
The title should of been “How to milk the wealthy out of more money”. Of course leaving the poor to deal with the traffic.
I’m okay with carpool lanes and I’m even okay with toll lanes. Electric vehicles, however, should not get a free pass to use these lanes.
Second Day Reaction Side Effects Keflex Acheter Cialis Pas Cher En France [url=http://tadalaf20mg.com ]cialis[/url] Sevelamer