Creating rush-hour tolls for local highways could help alleviate traffic jams and allow more cars without building new roads, according to a federal study.
The report, commissioned by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, calls for decreasing rush-hour traffic by 10 to 14 percent. If traffic were reduced by that amount, delays could be cut by up to 80 percent.
On a 10.5-mile stretch of Interstate 95 between the Washington and Baltimore beltways, drivers would save more than five minutes each day and 14.6 cents per vehicle mile during peak congestion hours. Multiplied among all the drivers who take the road, that would mean millions of dollars in annual time savings, according to the report.
The study called for charging a “modest” toll for single-occupant vehicles while improving car pools, van pools and transit options to create significant shifts in traffic patterns. Congestion-pricing tolls vary by either the time of day or the amount of traffic on the roadways.
The goal would be to discourage most discretionary trips, such as shopping, until non-rush-hour times of day. Such trips comprise from 7.7 percent or 10.5 percent of rush-hour trips depending on the time of day, the report found.
To achieve free-flowing traffic, though, the tolls would also need to persuade an additional 5 to 10 percent of single-occupancy vehicle trips to switch to high-occupancy-vehicle travel, meaning multiple passengers per car.
The report looked at how to improve what it called the Washington area’s “endemic” congestion that costs residents hours of wasted time and millions of dollars while worsening air quality. Louis Berger Group consultants studied traffic patterns on segments of three of the Washington region’s main arteries: Interstates 270, 95 and the Capital Beltway. The report cost $84,909, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
In addition to the delays, the unpredictability of the traffic is also part of the problem, according to the report. Congestion varies by morning and evening commutes. It changes by day of the week. And, as drivers around the region know too well, a commute that normally takes 30 minutes can unexpectedly take twice as long.
“Because the system is so near capacity, and exceeding capacity in some areas, a minor incident or a rainstorm, or simply too much traffic, causes major breakdowns and systemic delays,” the report said.
The proposed tolls could allow the region to avoid building entirely new roads, the study said, but some bottlenecks would need to be widened.
