Feds deny request to waive three-person car pool rule
From the Associated Press this morning:
Federal authorities have denied Georgia’s request for a waiver to allow two-person carpools in a new toll system on a metro Atlanta freeway.
The state had requested the waiver after repeated traffic backups in the new toll lanes on Interstate 85 in parts of Gwinnett and DeKalb counties.
CBS Atlanta reports that U.S. Department of Transportation officials said they believe it’s too early to evaluate the effectiveness of the so-called HOT lanes. In a letter denying the request, federal authorities also said the toll rates and motorists not being familiar with the lanes may be contributing to their low use.
The waiver would have allowed more drivers to use the new lanes for free.
Without the waiver, vehicles must have three or more people to use them for free.
- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider
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179 comments Add your comment
db
November 22nd, 2011
2:49 pm
Why don’t the feds do something about the deficit and jobs and quit making laws.
WTH?
Vote them all out!
Travis
November 22nd, 2011
2:55 pm
“Then it was clearly not being UNDERutilized, was it? Sounds like it was effective. Now those cars that were in that lane are sandwiched in with all the others in the remaining lanes. So this helps with congestion how?”
Your missing the point. The USDOT said no to the grant money under the current terms. they said that our HOV lanes were not operating efficiently and they the USDOT required the move to 3 people. your right they ere not under utilized they were over utilized. Since you dont like paying 1.55 for moving traffic i also assume you would not like your taxes being raised to build a wider highway. Pick your poison, I use the lane daily and love it. I get home in 40 minutes which is faster than before and get to spend more time with my family which is much more valuable than 1.55.
Mike G
November 22nd, 2011
2:56 pm
The quality of life has gone progressively gone down in Gwinnett for the past 10 years. Look at your empty strip malls, look at the forclosure rates, look at the section 8 people infesting every corner. The traffic was absurd BEFORE the implenting of the HOT lanes. You should have gotten out of there years ago.
Bill Clinton
November 22nd, 2011
2:58 pm
When you sell your soul to the federal government, they own you for life! The funny part is, its your taxes that paid for it all! LOL!
Mountain Man
November 22nd, 2011
3:04 pm
“The USDOT said no to the grant money under the current terms. they said that our HOV lanes were not operating efficiently and they the USDOT required the move to 3 people”
What grant money – the money we could have said we didn’t want? So you answer my question – it was not about improving congestion. And your answer says that people with the money like it – people without just have to put up with MORE congestion.
It was all about the money – just like Georgia 400.
Travis
November 22nd, 2011
3:11 pm
I would not put myself in the category of people with money. But I do value the time with my family so I choose to cut elsewhere. Again its $1.55. You can choose to carpool or take transit if you like. Or better yet you could have attended one of the 6 meetings that took place prior to the implementation which the GADOT said practically no one showed up to, instead of complaining like most others here only when it starts to affect them. So you had no interest in the project before, but now that it affects you you care?
Atlien
November 22nd, 2011
3:24 pm
People do realize that no one held a gun to their head when they bought a house 40 miles from their job??? Idiots
Mountain Man
November 22nd, 2011
3:36 pm
“People do realize that no one held a gun to their head when they bought a house 40 miles from their job??? Idiots”
People who bought their houses 40 miles up 85 so their children would have a better education probably thought that idiots in the State government would take a lane away and make congestion even worse than it was. Moron.
Tommy
November 22nd, 2011
3:48 pm
Well yall will have plenty of time to think about all of this when you are sitting on I-85 today… nothing but time to think…….
Andrew
November 22nd, 2011
4:01 pm
First: Next time there is a vote on a ballot for toll lanes don’t vote yes. I think we said yes as a state around 80%. I can’t remember exactly when but there was a question on a ballot something like: Would you be opposed to replacing HOV lanes with toll lanes?
Second: I drive the other direction every day. I can say, with the exception of a few days, the traffic is the same as it has been for the last three years!
JB
November 22nd, 2011
4:01 pm
Kevin,
“A Federal initiative to enforce a behavior they feel is the best thing for us will end up costing us more (commute time, gas, productivity).”
Sorry, as much as you’d like to desperately try to link this to Obama (!? ha!), this was a STATE decision. Georgia has control over its roads/highways and they applied for the federal funding for the HOT lanes.
Sorry to crush your remarkably skewed world-view, but Republicans do stupid things too (see: 2000-2008, and the entire history of Georgia since 1980).
Gonzalez
November 22nd, 2011
4:11 pm
Que paletos redneck tonto
Gonzalez
November 22nd, 2011
4:14 pm
@Mountain Man-de la necedad de Montaña hillbilly mierda
honested
November 22nd, 2011
4:54 pm
With all these deeply introspective comments, how did we let the General Assembly get away with the lame TSPLOST, which oddly lacks the appropriate mass transit necessary to abate the traffic nightmare?
One lane does not a solution make.
Ole Guy
November 22nd, 2011
6:02 pm
PUBLIC TRANS…it’s the only way. Every major metro area…and many not so major…around the world has excellent bus/train networks throughout the regions and between those very regions. While Atlanta…long a self-promoter of “world class stature”…insists on the single-occupant vehicle as the predominant means of commuting, the rest of the world…(so-called) rich and the not-so rich; professionals and laborers alike…consider public transportation as simply a way of life. Every dollar which goes into these road projects is a mis-spent resource.
Madison
November 22nd, 2011
8:56 pm
Keep the hot lanes if the money goes to build light rail from lawrenceville to the Brookhaven station
netdragon
November 23rd, 2011
1:03 am
Jerome: This was a public-private partnership so I have no clue why you’re saying this doesn’t match a private project. That’s what it is
Saying otherwise just shows your ignorance. Where were you when they were discussing 3 people? I ultimately think it should go back to 2 people, but not after studying the long-term effects as the US Government discussed.
Martha Zoller
November 23rd, 2011
5:00 am
Another example of why we need to get the Federal government out of our lives. I attended a meeting in White County on Monday where GDOT and elected officials presented a plan for a road that had been on the books for 20 years. One person asked, “you told us a year ago you were ready to go and not one bit of dirt has been moved, what happened? The GDOT rep went into a litany of permits and federal hoops he was jumping through–my words, not his.
At least 4 times in the presentation he referred to this federal issue or that one to get funding.
Maybe we can build our roads without the feds.
In the report that came out in March identifying 100B in duplicated services, over 50B was in the Dept of Transportation.
Martha Zoller
Edward Ruffin
November 23rd, 2011
7:02 am
Regarding the feds disapproval of our HOT lane request: JUST ONE MORE REASON THAT MY SLOGAN MAKES SENSE…………..FEDS OUT OF DIXIE!
honested
November 23rd, 2011
7:58 am
martha,
Did you have a point?
Weren’t the Federal regulations in place when the dirt scratcher you mentioned bid for the contract?
Madison
November 23rd, 2011
9:12 am
Martha
We used to build roads without the Feds. They were called dirt roads or, in the affluent areas, tar and gravel.
Madison
November 23rd, 2011
9:22 am
Sure Ed, get the Feds out.
Forget maintenance of interstate highways, medicaid funding, education funding, economic development funding and watch you state taxes rise or watch the state default. For every dollar we Georgians send to Washington, we get $1.01 back, meaning the general federal operations are paid for by some other states. If you think Georgia can survive as a sovereign, think again.
Don
November 23rd, 2011
10:19 am
So, HOT lanes don’t help. What would? Widen I-85? Now, that’s funny! The HOV lane additions a few years ago widened the road to it’s maximum width. You’d have to lengthen every single overpass on the route to add another lane. You’d also have to start taking more land on one side or the other of the right of way. Neither of these are cheap!
Figure a billion or two to widen the road another lane in each direction from I-285 to the I-985 split. Since a highway lane can only carry 2000 vehicle per hour, that works out to $32 per vehicle per day. (over 20 years, figuring a 3 hour rush period, 260 work days per year at $1B capital, 0% cost of capital). Whose up for a $16 one way toll lane?
Bryan -- MARTA supporter
November 23rd, 2011
1:25 pm
@ FUGDOT
November 22nd, 2011
1:39 pm
Really, name a transit system in the world that operates in the black? And you are right, MARTA rail should have been build in the 70s. Let’s see why it wasn’t. Oh yeah, the white folks at the time were scared of “crime” aka black folks coming to rob them. Now look where all the crime is. Gwinnett and Cobb are always in the paper. WITHOUT MARTA!
Bryan -- MARTA supporter
November 23rd, 2011
1:27 pm
@ Mountain Man
November 22nd, 2011
1:58 pm
So I guess that’s why the main frame work of MARTA parallels the interstate system and doesn’t criss cross all through the hood huh? Or why the orginal plan would have took it into the suburbs, again, parallel to the highways. All of your comments have just been stupid!
Eli
November 26th, 2011
9:00 pm
Until you people are willing to pay more taxes then user-fee type “public” services will continue to proliferate. You can not have low taxes and more services without running a deficit.
The options are very clear: 1: pay more taxes; 2: pay taxes equal to or lower than the current rates and pay user fees (this has been the GOP’s preferred platform since the 80s); 3: pay less in taxes and rack up debt (this has been the GOP’s modus operandi since the 80s): 4: pay less in taxes, do not charge user fees and allow the infrastructure to deteriorate (which is the Tea Party platform).
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CoolBreeze
November 28th, 2011
4:57 pm
This is simple…pay up or sit in traffic and shut up…