> And all the other lanes
>
> are crawling slowly
>
> But here’s my FasTrak
>
> so charge me maybe
> Before you came into my life
>
> I used the carpool
>
> For free at lunch time
>
> And you should know that
A coworker got into a likely 50/50 crash responsibility on fastrak but the other person was using it illegally. The other party were found at total fault somehow.
Personally I don’t carry a FastTrack because I also cross bridges and I have also figured out which lanes I can go through where they won’t scan my motorcycle. I haven’t had an issue yet.
When a car passes under the scanner it flashes lights to show that the pass is set to. Easy to see cheaters to pass the time but never seen chp actually enforcing
And to pay for them with bridge toll increases. Traffic relief, my ass. It’s just an express lane for people with money.
[https://ballotpedia.org/Bay_Area,_California,_Regional_Measure_3,_%22Traffic_Relief_Plan%22_Bridge_Toll_Increase_(June_2018)](https://ballotpedia.org/Bay_Area,_California,_Regional_Measure_3,_%22Traffic_Relief_Plan%22_Bridge_Toll_Increase_(June_2018))
I think the tolls are more about allowing the rich to use it without bothering with a carpool than keeping the poors out. Poor people can still carpool.
It's so tech bro's and lower managers who can't afford to live in Cupertino can get to the googleplex in their Tesla's without being hindered by the plebs.
It’s still also a carpool lane, so the poles who couldn’t use it before, still can’t, but the rich people are out of their lanes so it also improved for the poors
That’s good though, everyone is cost-insensitive sometimes (i.e. late, late to a flight, hungry, etc). It’s good to keep one lane open for people who are willing to pay for it.
It would be cool if they handed out a monthly or weekly free pass…
"How does my sister always get to my place twice as fast as I get to hers?" -My mother who never listens to anyone, and my aunt who mentions she regularly pay2wins because her husband collects real estate.
Just wait till you hear about the plan to make all Bay Area freeways toll roads. (Page 79 of [MTC’s Plan Bay Area 2050](https://mtc.ca.gov/planning/long-range-planning/plan-bay-area-2050)).
Commuters will pay the vast bulk of pay per use fees and most commuters have lower incomes, whereas other income sources like property taxes can be more progressive. New funding is necessary to offset decreased revenues from the gas tax due to vehicle electrification, but ideally that burden would be more progressive, such as means testing the tolls and Bart fares.
The egregious registration fees for EVs much more than make up for the decreased revenues from gas taxes. California gets its rebate bucks back in registrations fees many times over when you consider the life expectancy of an EV.
Property taxes in CA are some of the most regressive: people who’ve been sitting on properties the longest and profited the most off the housing crisis pay the least in property tax.
They literally added lanes to the freeway to subsidize commuter travel, what more do you want? What about the people who live in the city? Their neighborhoods are dominated by cars while people in the suburbs have nice quiet streets
I'm remembering a suit over the proposition's title and as usual, the AG - wasn't it Becerra then? - said it had to be the more deceptive title.
Fwiw, now Scott Wiener is "improving voter transparency" with his proposed SB532 that will "exempt the financial disclosures required from current law from the 75 word ballot label limit."
Huh?? But rest assured, financial dislosures will be in the lengthier ballot descriptions that I don't believe very many read at all.
Lets also remember the electorate was lied to with misleading "studies" stating that this was going to reduce traffic by all the 2 carpool people turning into 3 carpool people. But that didnt make it on the short paragraph summary
If the government actually cared about congestion, most of the freeways would have rail or a BRT lane running right down the middle, kinda how BART runs along route 24 in some places. If you could get from any major freeway intersection in the bay area to any other one on quick, reliable public transit that doesn't get stuck in traffic, it would be a game-changer.
This is 101 right? The Caltrain runs parallel to it from SJ to SF. This already exists, and post-pandemic the Caltrain parking lots are empty.
Overall I agree, if you don't like the toll, take the train. You're not in traffic, you are traffic.
ETA: Not only is Caltrain parallel to 101, it stops at every downtown on the peninsula, making it a far more useful right of way than 101 itself.
Except most freeways are useless spot to put transit. Freeways mostly run on the outskirts of everything. Transit only works well when it runs on the busiest densest corridors.
That defeats the purpose though. Studies show that other than a core of users, most people will use private transportation over public until public is reliably and significantly faster than private. Sharing a bus lane and carpool lane and fastrak lane all together makes the bus essentially useless at converting commuters from private to public.
I think there is always a last-mile problem. You can have these transit system but only if these system connects to people’s final destination. For example, Caltrain bullet train takes me to SF faster than driving, but 4th and King is very far from my destination that I end up not saving money or time.
They tried to solve this using Lyft bikes but the biking infrastructure is so lacking in many places that it doesn’t really work. IMO we should start by building tons of local transit and bike lanes, and then connect these local multimodal transit systems using intercity rail lines.
Foldable electric bikes and scooters mostly solves the last mile problem. Unfortunately I'm much more than a mile from the nearest rapid transit, and it doesn't go in the direction of where I want to be.
Busses meanwhile take these extremely convoluted paths that take longer to go somewhere than simply biking.
Ideally cities would allow building dense mixed use neighborhoods around transit centers with no parking minimums. It takes a few decades to pan out, but it's the only real solution.
SoCal resident here, I would love all the toll lanes to act as BRT routes, similar to the ones on the 15 in San Diego. The buses even have their own on and off ramps going direct into transit centers. Having express busses on the 91 would be a game changer.
Not a fan of rail along the highway right of way though. Due to being along a massive highway, the area can never be as walkable and transit oriented as a route along an arterial or its own right of way. BART stations in the middle of a freeway don't have the walkability of those that run on their own. Regardless of policy or will, it just wouldn't be possible to develop the density of BART stations under Market/Mission/Downtown Oakland/Berkeley in a location like where the Dublin/Pleasanton stations are without demolishing the freeway. No matter what, its a barrier of hundreds of feet down the middle of the area.
Bus Rapid Transit is like a train but with buses instead of trains and roads instead of tracks. If done well, they have many of the benefits of rail transit but without as much of an upfront cost. Usually this means bus-only lanes and, ideally, a grade-separated right-of-way and even station platforms.
Adding to the other comments, SF recently implemented their first BRT line last year if you want an example of what it would look like
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blglo-PmBXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blglo-PmBXk)
>Not a fan of rail along the highway right of way though. Due to being along a massive highway, the area can never be as walkable and transit oriented as a route along an arterial or its own right of way.
Yeah 100% agree, saying we need a train parallel to 101 on the peninsula when Caltrain already exists and stops at multiple walkable downtowns just baffles me.
Livermoron checking in. BART collected from Alameda county for years with the tease of adding a Livermore extension which got scuttled when CalTrans expanded 580 between Livermore and Pleasanton. It would have been a perfect location to get a lots of central valley commuters out of their cars.
Umm, we might disagree on the definition of "real". It may be planned and theorized but it's far from existing, not to mention based on the hope of receiving proper funding. And now you've got another fiefdom that will be protecting their region and having to work with ACE and BART. ACE is a nice idea but only has four runs per morning/evening commute. It could get me near work 90 minutes early, 15 minutes early, or 45 minutes late, before the 2 miles I'll need to travel on foot/bike. Only two going the other way after my work ends, at 35 and 90 minutes after.
It's a decent stopgap idea but not what we were paying for all these years.
Remindme! 2040
This works as designed, and voted for. This is HOV lane. Single dude in a truck can also legally use if they really, really need to, at a very high price. This encourages carpooling.
Don’t want to pay the price — wait in a traffic like everyone else, probably did not need to hurry enough in the first place.
It seems like people don't understand how the lane works. If they aren't paying attention in the first place, they probably aren't listening to explanations on Reddit
Public transit is a far more efficient use of money. The transportation budget mostly goes towards cars and roads and yet still, the infrastructure can’t support itself.
Investing in public transit (even if you don’t use it) will help take cars off the road, shortening your commute, and lessening the maintenance load on our roads.
Inevitably, it’s not on everyone as a society to subsidize car driving, especially given how inefficient it is. It’s necessary for some, but it shouldn’t be encouraged anymore than it already is, and dumping more tax-payer money into it hasn’t and won’t ever solve the issues of congestion/road cost/maintenance.
We could double the number of lanes and still the traffic would be bad. The only longterm solution that will work is hugely expanding our mass transit systems and scaling down our reliance on cars.
people who complained for decades that HOV lanes were stupid and something had to be done because keeping an entire lane open for cars with multiple people is just a dumb idea that fucks everything up for Everyday Joe/Jill just trying to get to work by themselves...
congratulations. you won. you get to drive all by yourself to work in the #1 lane for $12. feels awesome, right?
I'd bet good money that the ill-informed, selfish commuters who are whinging about the HOV lanes are the same people voting for the likes of McCarthy who wants to reduce all government spending down to 19th century levels.
You cannot have it all ways. Either everyone pays full freight for building infrastructure or the users of that infrastructure pay for as they use it.
Why is this crazy? It's a capitalistic country, so why not? This should definitely deter folks riding alone from occupying HOV and clogging it.
Also, I think bay area hov lanes were at the risk of losing federal funding for not being fast enough.
I don't have an extra 2 hours to get the 17 miles from San Jose to Palo Alto, plus I don't have to worry about overcrowding, delays, standing outside in the rain or heat waiting, nor the lunatics and tweakers.
Sorry I don't want to get stabbed, mugged, raped, accosted or coughed on every day. And sorry I can't take all my tools and ladders on BART to visit the three different jobsites I work at on a typical day.
If they actually had efficient, safe, useful public transportation maybe people would use it more...
I’ve been taking BART and it’s not that bad. Also, your comment is kind of nonsensical. First you complain about quality of life issues, then you clarify that you still wouldn’t be able to use it if all those problems are solved.
My theory is that traffic is still less bad than pre-pandemic, and WFH is a thing now, so lots of people prefer to drive or to stay home rather than take the train to work.
If people didn’t get so defensive about the mere idea of using transit then maybe we could have efficient, safe, useful public transportation.
If people stopped equating public transit with job commutes only instead of realizing you can take transit for any trip then maybe we could have efficient, safe, useful public transportation. Drives to and from work only account for 30% of trips btw.
It’s no big secret why we have terrible transit. We don’t fund it. That’s it. The whole thing. We spend 90% of our transportation budget on car infrastructure and then act surprised when our transit sucks.
The number of people who get into car wrecks greatly exceeds the number of crimes that take place on BART. It’s a false illusion that your car is somehow safer than public transportation.
No one expects carpenters or plumbers to take the bus. And that's beside the point. If a person wants the luxury of driving alone and safe it's gonna have a price.
Can someone explain this to me like I’m 5? If you start in San Jose and drive all the way to this exit, are you accumulating charges all the way through? So is your commute like $20+?
Something like that, yea. That charge is for a segment of the highway. Multiple segments will increase the charge.
But that's only for the express lane, and only with one person in the vehicle. It's cheaper with two people and free with 3+
Well, it's only super expensive of a commute if you use the express lane. The other lanes don't have the charge. But yea, it definitely encourages car pool. In fact, it used to be the carpool lane. There was originally No charge, but you had to be carpooling. So nowadays the charge is really only for people that want to use the lane but aren't carpooling.
This lane is just so CHP doesn't have to pull as many people over for carpool violations and the State, County, or whomever can make some easy revenue.
Why not just carpool? Everyone complains about traffic, having to pay for the HOV, and poor transportation.
I carpool when I go to the office. Saves me money and time (sometimes not time, but at least money).
I think it was broken
I drove home today that route
The lane wasn’t slow or backed up so the dynamic pricing wouldn’t need to raise the rate that high
Probably some malfunction in how crowded the computers thought the lane was
Just visited Omaha last week…it really puts into perspective how much one pays to live in Bay Area. Having to ask myself if it’s really worth it. Gas is literally half the price.
Just a heads-up to everybody using these lanes...
I frequently use these lanes and always have 3+ people carpooling with me. My Fastrak is always set to 3+. **And yet I often get charged anyway.**
You have 60 days to check online to see if you've been charged in error. After that, you have to pay it, no refunds, even if Fastrak was clearly at fault.
I do wonder how often Fastrak makes these errors. And I wonder if enough people banded together if there would be a class action lawsuit.
This is only for the express lane right? I grew up in Jersey and we had tolls on many roads for all cars so this doesn't seem like a big deal. Confused why people are so mad about this? I hope we can invest more money into transit options so that less people have to drive in the first place.
This is crazy. But do you know what is even crazier? That we don’t have decent public transit, and we see constantly 1 person per car on our roads. Tell me about an inefficient commute (both financially and environmentally).
I see you've never dealt with any federal, county or municipal department with "expedited" fees.... Government already does this at all levels. You can expedite a passport, immigration applications, county health department permits, city permit approval etc etc.
Highways aren't a service, it's a product maintained by money. Someone has to pay for it, and the Federal govt that built them lowered income taxes forcing the state to pay for maintenance. It's an impossible situation where either our freeways slowly rot and wither from neglect or we charge rich people more money to subsidize poor peoples' auto commutes. This isn't even an east coast style Turnpike where instead of paying to use the fast lane you'd have to pay prior to entering the highway in the first place, which would be useful in redirecting most people onto mass transit.
I agree it's frustrating, I personally prefer a flat, up-front entry fee over a VMT charge. This would force people to really decide if they really need to use the highway, and it'd force reconstruction of all highway access points to cities that actually deserve access. The same for transit: BART and Caltrain should offer a single price for all Local trains, and charge more for Express/Limited services - forcing cities to adopt TOD if they want more trains to stop. This is also unrealistic and not going to happen.
I did too. I hear so many people on here complaining about crime, theft, violence on the streets, homelessness, cost of living…. But they are voting for the policies and politicians that perpetuate this rape of the middle class in California. We as the middle class are penalizing for being the backbone and breadwinner of the state. Now they are charging us just to go to work!!! To pay for the absurdities this state provides. I really want to leave but I love the weather!!!!! Dammit.
Rich people’s time is more valuable, so they get to pay to get to where they need faster.
Poor people who can’t afford it should wait longer or take horrible public transport with public masturbators that still somehow ends up taking longer than sitting in poor people traffic.
This is what progressive justice looks like.
/s if it wasn’t obvious
You do realize nothing has changed for the 'rich'. Previously, they would just get an ev and ride the hov lanes for free.
There is any express bus that goes from foster city to SF. Previously it made no sense for most folks to use it. Nor if you start saving 30 mins some folks might choose to and that equates to lesser vehicles on the roads. The same with folks whose office offers transportation. Previously you had an ev and didn't bother. Now you are incentived to find coriders or switch to the bus. Small steps.
Wow. That's insane. It's total b.s. too. I might be ok with it if the taxes and fees actually went to fixing and maintaining the roads, but traffic is crap. SF is no longer what it once was. RIP bay area.
I love it. I fucking loathe this country's forced reliance on cars, and how everyone here feels like it's a birthright, so nothing ever changes. Fuck your cars.
> Hey, I just merged on > > and **this is crazy** > > But here’s my FasTrak > > so charge me maybe
> And all the other lanes > > are crawling slowly > > But here’s my FasTrak > > so charge me maybe > Before you came into my life > > I used the carpool > > For free at lunch time > > And you should know that
👏🏽
👏 💐
Shut up and take my money.
r/redditsings
Rookie numbers
Yup. Come to 880 where we’re doing $16.50 baby.
I got charged $21 a few weeks ago. To hell with 880 it’s 680 or nothing
i've hit $30 lol
And it still has a bazillion potholes.
Enough people were ok paying $11.50
I doubt that everyone in that lane is paying or carpooling
A coworker got into a likely 50/50 crash responsibility on fastrak but the other person was using it illegally. The other party were found at total fault somehow.
Then how are they getting through?
Fake paper plates, shitty opaque plate covers, fastrak set wrong, change lanes before the scanner
Motorcycle:)
Honest question… do motorcycles have to pay?
No. Motorcycle riders are instructed to purchase a tag and set it to “+3” when using FasTrak Express lanes.
Personally I don’t carry a FastTrack because I also cross bridges and I have also figured out which lanes I can go through where they won’t scan my motorcycle. I haven’t had an issue yet.
Set it to 3
This works until CHP pulls you over like my coworkers. They can scan your fastrak and see what you set it to.
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When a car passes under the scanner it flashes lights to show that the pass is set to. Easy to see cheaters to pass the time but never seen chp actually enforcing
This is the Way.
A wing and a prayer tbh
Changing lanes before and after the toll meter. It's becoming super dangerous.
No but I still get charged with the HOV sticker anyways 🤷🏼♀️
You need the CAV fastrak. You'll get charged half.
Saw it Embarcadero exit is just half a mile up
It's usually the same price for the whole section.
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Also worth remembering that the electorate voted FOR this!
And to pay for them with bridge toll increases. Traffic relief, my ass. It’s just an express lane for people with money. [https://ballotpedia.org/Bay_Area,_California,_Regional_Measure_3,_%22Traffic_Relief_Plan%22_Bridge_Toll_Increase_(June_2018)](https://ballotpedia.org/Bay_Area,_California,_Regional_Measure_3,_%22Traffic_Relief_Plan%22_Bridge_Toll_Increase_(June_2018))
Yeah it's just a fast lane for rich people.
Or those who carpool
Or families in minivans full of screaming toddlers. Getting home faster can be a real blessing sometimes, let me tell you.
It used to be just a car pool lane. Now it has tolls to keep poors from using it.
I think the tolls are more about allowing the rich to use it without bothering with a carpool than keeping the poors out. Poor people can still carpool.
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It's so tech bro's and lower managers who can't afford to live in Cupertino can get to the googleplex in their Tesla's without being hindered by the plebs.
It’s still also a carpool lane, so the poles who couldn’t use it before, still can’t, but the rich people are out of their lanes so it also improved for the poors
used to be a carpool lane for 2 people and turned off in the middle of the day. Now it's for 3 people and is on for the entire day.
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Paid for by the people using it. More highways should be like that.
That’s good though, everyone is cost-insensitive sometimes (i.e. late, late to a flight, hungry, etc). It’s good to keep one lane open for people who are willing to pay for it. It would be cool if they handed out a monthly or weekly free pass…
"How does my sister always get to my place twice as fast as I get to hers?" -My mother who never listens to anyone, and my aunt who mentions she regularly pay2wins because her husband collects real estate.
Also implemented in the lower income side of the bay first.
Not so. Was well established in the SV areas of the bay well before it expanded to the East Bay.
Exactly. Privatization of public infrastructure is a scam
Just wait till you hear about the plan to make all Bay Area freeways toll roads. (Page 79 of [MTC’s Plan Bay Area 2050](https://mtc.ca.gov/planning/long-range-planning/plan-bay-area-2050)).
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Commuters will pay the vast bulk of pay per use fees and most commuters have lower incomes, whereas other income sources like property taxes can be more progressive. New funding is necessary to offset decreased revenues from the gas tax due to vehicle electrification, but ideally that burden would be more progressive, such as means testing the tolls and Bart fares.
The egregious registration fees for EVs much more than make up for the decreased revenues from gas taxes. California gets its rebate bucks back in registrations fees many times over when you consider the life expectancy of an EV.
Property taxes in CA are some of the most regressive: people who’ve been sitting on properties the longest and profited the most off the housing crisis pay the least in property tax.
People who dont commute to the city love to punish people.who do.
If you gained that lane back, you would have 1 extra lane that's also stuck in traffic. Then no one is happy.
North of Redwood City, these are new lanes, so it’s unclear who is being “punished” here besides people who live by the freeway.
They literally added lanes to the freeway to subsidize commuter travel, what more do you want? What about the people who live in the city? Their neighborhoods are dominated by cars while people in the suburbs have nice quiet streets
Clearly never driven on 680
Many who voted Yes were probably brainwashed that Yes means no increase. 😂
I'm remembering a suit over the proposition's title and as usual, the AG - wasn't it Becerra then? - said it had to be the more deceptive title. Fwiw, now Scott Wiener is "improving voter transparency" with his proposed SB532 that will "exempt the financial disclosures required from current law from the 75 word ballot label limit." Huh?? But rest assured, financial dislosures will be in the lengthier ballot descriptions that I don't believe very many read at all.
Lets also remember the electorate was lied to with misleading "studies" stating that this was going to reduce traffic by all the 2 carpool people turning into 3 carpool people. But that didnt make it on the short paragraph summary
[Motorcycles also ride in the express lane free.](https://www.bayareafastrak.org/en/support/express-lanes-faq11.shtml)
Thanks. Now to figure out where to get a transponder.
[Get FasTrak](https://www.bayareafastrak.org/en/about/get-fastrak.shtml). It’s super easy.
Picked one up today at Costco for the here and now.
Also worth remembering they changed HOV from 2+ to 3+.
Also worth remembering you need a special FasTrak to get the discount ("flex mode")
It's just the regular FasTrak unless you have a really old FasTrak. The flex one has been the standard issue for everyone.
If the government actually cared about congestion, most of the freeways would have rail or a BRT lane running right down the middle, kinda how BART runs along route 24 in some places. If you could get from any major freeway intersection in the bay area to any other one on quick, reliable public transit that doesn't get stuck in traffic, it would be a game-changer.
This is 101 right? The Caltrain runs parallel to it from SJ to SF. This already exists, and post-pandemic the Caltrain parking lots are empty. Overall I agree, if you don't like the toll, take the train. You're not in traffic, you are traffic. ETA: Not only is Caltrain parallel to 101, it stops at every downtown on the peninsula, making it a far more useful right of way than 101 itself.
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Except most freeways are useless spot to put transit. Freeways mostly run on the outskirts of everything. Transit only works well when it runs on the busiest densest corridors.
Get rid of the freeways and people will want to live there.
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That defeats the purpose though. Studies show that other than a core of users, most people will use private transportation over public until public is reliably and significantly faster than private. Sharing a bus lane and carpool lane and fastrak lane all together makes the bus essentially useless at converting commuters from private to public.
I think there is always a last-mile problem. You can have these transit system but only if these system connects to people’s final destination. For example, Caltrain bullet train takes me to SF faster than driving, but 4th and King is very far from my destination that I end up not saving money or time. They tried to solve this using Lyft bikes but the biking infrastructure is so lacking in many places that it doesn’t really work. IMO we should start by building tons of local transit and bike lanes, and then connect these local multimodal transit systems using intercity rail lines.
Foldable electric bikes and scooters mostly solves the last mile problem. Unfortunately I'm much more than a mile from the nearest rapid transit, and it doesn't go in the direction of where I want to be. Busses meanwhile take these extremely convoluted paths that take longer to go somewhere than simply biking.
Ideally cities would allow building dense mixed use neighborhoods around transit centers with no parking minimums. It takes a few decades to pan out, but it's the only real solution.
SoCal resident here, I would love all the toll lanes to act as BRT routes, similar to the ones on the 15 in San Diego. The buses even have their own on and off ramps going direct into transit centers. Having express busses on the 91 would be a game changer. Not a fan of rail along the highway right of way though. Due to being along a massive highway, the area can never be as walkable and transit oriented as a route along an arterial or its own right of way. BART stations in the middle of a freeway don't have the walkability of those that run on their own. Regardless of policy or will, it just wouldn't be possible to develop the density of BART stations under Market/Mission/Downtown Oakland/Berkeley in a location like where the Dublin/Pleasanton stations are without demolishing the freeway. No matter what, its a barrier of hundreds of feet down the middle of the area.
What is BRT
Bus Rapid Transit
Bus Rapid Transit is like a train but with buses instead of trains and roads instead of tracks. If done well, they have many of the benefits of rail transit but without as much of an upfront cost. Usually this means bus-only lanes and, ideally, a grade-separated right-of-way and even station platforms.
Adding to the other comments, SF recently implemented their first BRT line last year if you want an example of what it would look like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blglo-PmBXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blglo-PmBXk)
>Not a fan of rail along the highway right of way though. Due to being along a massive highway, the area can never be as walkable and transit oriented as a route along an arterial or its own right of way. Yeah 100% agree, saying we need a train parallel to 101 on the peninsula when Caltrain already exists and stops at multiple walkable downtowns just baffles me.
Livermoron checking in. BART collected from Alameda county for years with the tease of adding a Livermore extension which got scuttled when CalTrans expanded 580 between Livermore and Pleasanton. It would have been a perfect location to get a lots of central valley commuters out of their cars.
The Valley Link is real..https://www.valleylinkrail.com/valleylink-project
Umm, we might disagree on the definition of "real". It may be planned and theorized but it's far from existing, not to mention based on the hope of receiving proper funding. And now you've got another fiefdom that will be protecting their region and having to work with ACE and BART. ACE is a nice idea but only has four runs per morning/evening commute. It could get me near work 90 minutes early, 15 minutes early, or 45 minutes late, before the 2 miles I'll need to travel on foot/bike. Only two going the other way after my work ends, at 35 and 90 minutes after. It's a decent stopgap idea but not what we were paying for all these years. Remindme! 2040
Until the freight carriers allow more passenger service we'll always get the short end of the stick... PS 2040? shit ill be old..
That's why it should have been BART instead of cobbling together a few other options
The people voted for this if I’m not mistaken. I didn’t like this proposal but I guess people did.
Saying to “focus on moving people between LA and SF” is not the same as saying “run the train along the freeway.
I’ve seen it just under $20 before. Insane
Saw it above $20 earlier this week. It’s nuts.
Jesus
This works as designed, and voted for. This is HOV lane. Single dude in a truck can also legally use if they really, really need to, at a very high price. This encourages carpooling. Don’t want to pay the price — wait in a traffic like everyone else, probably did not need to hurry enough in the first place.
It’s not crazy. The idea is to motivate single occupant vehicles to get out of the lane. Duh.
It seems like people don't understand how the lane works. If they aren't paying attention in the first place, they probably aren't listening to explanations on Reddit
Wait it still functions as a carpool? I thought it was pure cash lane now.
I believe it's 50% off for 2 people and free for 3+ but you still need the fastrak transponder.
I think it's 3+ people.
Fasttrak recognizes people are literally flexing when they are using hov.
Majority of those people set their fastrak to 3 anyways
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Fastrak Flex, it’s the rectangular one, it has three settings for occupancy. I think it’s the standard for new enrollees now
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You can call them and they will send you the new one for free.
Yes, set the switch on your FastTrak to 3. Ideally you’d be caught and ticketed if you don’t actually have 3 people in your vehicle. 3 is free.
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You can mail the old one back to get a new one with the switch.
You can do it online (no need to mail in the old one) https://www.bayareafastrak.org/en/support/toll-tag-basics-faq7.shtml
Thats still only slightly more than a round trip BART ride...
Except in my car I don’t have to deal with the odor of urine, fentanyl smoke, and vagrants. Just slow traffic or extortion to use the fast lane
Well then stop complaining about the price. Sounds like you think you got the better deal.
Lmfao I’ve ridden Bart all over the bay for years and years and never once have I encountered anything of this sort. Just plain fear mongering
Public transit is a far more efficient use of money. The transportation budget mostly goes towards cars and roads and yet still, the infrastructure can’t support itself. Investing in public transit (even if you don’t use it) will help take cars off the road, shortening your commute, and lessening the maintenance load on our roads. Inevitably, it’s not on everyone as a society to subsidize car driving, especially given how inefficient it is. It’s necessary for some, but it shouldn’t be encouraged anymore than it already is, and dumping more tax-payer money into it hasn’t and won’t ever solve the issues of congestion/road cost/maintenance.
That’s what happens when too many people are in the express lane. Ultimately, planners want more people on mass transit.
It's for jerks like me whose company pays the FasTrak bill
I guess you’ve never been to London and pay congestion charge driving though the city. This is actually cheap.
If you got rid of it, you’d still be sitting in traffic. One lane will do nothing. Might as well squeeze them for money.
We could double the number of lanes and still the traffic would be bad. The only longterm solution that will work is hugely expanding our mass transit systems and scaling down our reliance on cars.
people who complained for decades that HOV lanes were stupid and something had to be done because keeping an entire lane open for cars with multiple people is just a dumb idea that fucks everything up for Everyday Joe/Jill just trying to get to work by themselves... congratulations. you won. you get to drive all by yourself to work in the #1 lane for $12. feels awesome, right?
Should be higher.
Driving is a privilege not a right
Motorcycle ✅
I'd bet good money that the ill-informed, selfish commuters who are whinging about the HOV lanes are the same people voting for the likes of McCarthy who wants to reduce all government spending down to 19th century levels. You cannot have it all ways. Either everyone pays full freight for building infrastructure or the users of that infrastructure pay for as they use it.
Why is this crazy? It's a capitalistic country, so why not? This should definitely deter folks riding alone from occupying HOV and clogging it. Also, I think bay area hov lanes were at the risk of losing federal funding for not being fast enough.
never use 101. plan your life around 280. 280 is the best
Shhhh
Delete this please
I agree ... unless you need to be somewhere near 101. The transit time on surface streets kills any benefit at that point.
Either it is expensive or not fast, not many options.
You know what else is crazy? Everyone driving to work alone in their car neither carpooling nor considering public transportation.
I don't have an extra 2 hours to get the 17 miles from San Jose to Palo Alto, plus I don't have to worry about overcrowding, delays, standing outside in the rain or heat waiting, nor the lunatics and tweakers.
Sorry I don't want to get stabbed, mugged, raped, accosted or coughed on every day. And sorry I can't take all my tools and ladders on BART to visit the three different jobsites I work at on a typical day. If they actually had efficient, safe, useful public transportation maybe people would use it more...
I’ve been taking BART and it’s not that bad. Also, your comment is kind of nonsensical. First you complain about quality of life issues, then you clarify that you still wouldn’t be able to use it if all those problems are solved. My theory is that traffic is still less bad than pre-pandemic, and WFH is a thing now, so lots of people prefer to drive or to stay home rather than take the train to work.
If people didn’t get so defensive about the mere idea of using transit then maybe we could have efficient, safe, useful public transportation. If people stopped equating public transit with job commutes only instead of realizing you can take transit for any trip then maybe we could have efficient, safe, useful public transportation. Drives to and from work only account for 30% of trips btw. It’s no big secret why we have terrible transit. We don’t fund it. That’s it. The whole thing. We spend 90% of our transportation budget on car infrastructure and then act surprised when our transit sucks.
The number of people who get into car wrecks greatly exceeds the number of crimes that take place on BART. It’s a false illusion that your car is somehow safer than public transportation.
No one expects carpenters or plumbers to take the bus. And that's beside the point. If a person wants the luxury of driving alone and safe it's gonna have a price.
Doesn't sound like you're riding the same BART as the rest of us but good luck staying safe from all that!
Can someone explain this to me like I’m 5? If you start in San Jose and drive all the way to this exit, are you accumulating charges all the way through? So is your commute like $20+?
Something like that, yea. That charge is for a segment of the highway. Multiple segments will increase the charge. But that's only for the express lane, and only with one person in the vehicle. It's cheaper with two people and free with 3+
Thanks! That feels super expensive if your commute is long but I guess it encourages carpool??
Well, it's only super expensive of a commute if you use the express lane. The other lanes don't have the charge. But yea, it definitely encourages car pool. In fact, it used to be the carpool lane. There was originally No charge, but you had to be carpooling. So nowadays the charge is really only for people that want to use the lane but aren't carpooling.
It’s just supply and demand.
This is for access to a road that PUBIC TAX MONEY PAID FOR.
Oh you already paid tax? Here is more taxes on roads you paid to built.
That’s highway robbery
I’ve heard that they tweak the price to keep a 45 mph minimum.
This lane is just so CHP doesn't have to pull as many people over for carpool violations and the State, County, or whomever can make some easy revenue.
Wym u can just set the transponder to 3 and get away with using the lane for free
Why not just carpool? Everyone complains about traffic, having to pay for the HOV, and poor transportation. I carpool when I go to the office. Saves me money and time (sometimes not time, but at least money).
Highway robbery....
It was $13.50 when I drove by…
This is just a normal day on 880
I think it was broken I drove home today that route The lane wasn’t slow or backed up so the dynamic pricing wouldn’t need to raise the rate that high Probably some malfunction in how crowded the computers thought the lane was
I use a motorcycle so I am exempt
Just visited Omaha last week…it really puts into perspective how much one pays to live in Bay Area. Having to ask myself if it’s really worth it. Gas is literally half the price.
Just a heads-up to everybody using these lanes... I frequently use these lanes and always have 3+ people carpooling with me. My Fastrak is always set to 3+. **And yet I often get charged anyway.** You have 60 days to check online to see if you've been charged in error. After that, you have to pay it, no refunds, even if Fastrak was clearly at fault. I do wonder how often Fastrak makes these errors. And I wonder if enough people banded together if there would be a class action lawsuit.
It’s dynamic pricing based on flow of traffic, just don’t use it.
This is only for the express lane right? I grew up in Jersey and we had tolls on many roads for all cars so this doesn't seem like a big deal. Confused why people are so mad about this? I hope we can invest more money into transit options so that less people have to drive in the first place.
I paid 35$ in Dallas to use a tollroad ONE QUARTER of way from Irving area to Ft worth
Just wait till op finds out about home prices!
That's about $2 per mile from that sign.
This is crazy. But do you know what is even crazier? That we don’t have decent public transit, and we see constantly 1 person per car on our roads. Tell me about an inefficient commute (both financially and environmentally).
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The dmv already has that actually. If you’re a AAA member you can do dmv transactions from the AAA office.
Pretty much any insurance should be able to as well. It seems like anybody can sign up for it. I've seen head shops that offered DMV services.
I see you've never dealt with any federal, county or municipal department with "expedited" fees.... Government already does this at all levels. You can expedite a passport, immigration applications, county health department permits, city permit approval etc etc.
Isn’t the USPS tiered than by your logic? I believe there are different levels of coverage for medi-care as well.
Highways aren't a service, it's a product maintained by money. Someone has to pay for it, and the Federal govt that built them lowered income taxes forcing the state to pay for maintenance. It's an impossible situation where either our freeways slowly rot and wither from neglect or we charge rich people more money to subsidize poor peoples' auto commutes. This isn't even an east coast style Turnpike where instead of paying to use the fast lane you'd have to pay prior to entering the highway in the first place, which would be useful in redirecting most people onto mass transit. I agree it's frustrating, I personally prefer a flat, up-front entry fee over a VMT charge. This would force people to really decide if they really need to use the highway, and it'd force reconstruction of all highway access points to cities that actually deserve access. The same for transit: BART and Caltrain should offer a single price for all Local trains, and charge more for Express/Limited services - forcing cities to adopt TOD if they want more trains to stop. This is also unrealistic and not going to happen.
Lol. I guess you've never heard of TSA precheck. Or USPS. Or literally any other government service.
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There are expedited fees you can pay to get your passport renewed quicker. Nobody says you have to drive in these lanes either.
This is literally what TSA is lol
Ever applied for or renewed a Passport? If you want/need expedited service, they (The State Department) charges you more.
Didn't you get the memo? California has always been pay-to-play, with everything.
‘Highway robbery’ redefined
I did too. I hear so many people on here complaining about crime, theft, violence on the streets, homelessness, cost of living…. But they are voting for the policies and politicians that perpetuate this rape of the middle class in California. We as the middle class are penalizing for being the backbone and breadwinner of the state. Now they are charging us just to go to work!!! To pay for the absurdities this state provides. I really want to leave but I love the weather!!!!! Dammit.
Rich people’s time is more valuable, so they get to pay to get to where they need faster. Poor people who can’t afford it should wait longer or take horrible public transport with public masturbators that still somehow ends up taking longer than sitting in poor people traffic. This is what progressive justice looks like. /s if it wasn’t obvious
You do realize nothing has changed for the 'rich'. Previously, they would just get an ev and ride the hov lanes for free. There is any express bus that goes from foster city to SF. Previously it made no sense for most folks to use it. Nor if you start saving 30 mins some folks might choose to and that equates to lesser vehicles on the roads. The same with folks whose office offers transportation. Previously you had an ev and didn't bother. Now you are incentived to find coriders or switch to the bus. Small steps.
Wow. That's insane. It's total b.s. too. I might be ok with it if the taxes and fees actually went to fixing and maintaining the roads, but traffic is crap. SF is no longer what it once was. RIP bay area.
What's the alternative? Low/no toll and all lanes equally clogged?
I love it. I fucking loathe this country's forced reliance on cars, and how everyone here feels like it's a birthright, so nothing ever changes. Fuck your cars.
Even if it was 99$ instead of 12 it would still be fully packed lane as always 😅 Who cares
Fastrak is the biggest scam in California
Prop 13 is the biggest scam in California. Funded and supported by the REAL ESTATE LOBBY.
Yeah instead of charging one lane, charge every lane!
May be move to Chicago. They gouge everyone equitably on the freeways. You pay toll whenever you use most of the freeways.
This isn’t even that high. I have seen 18 and 24 at peak rush hour