[h=1]What Are Express Lanes?[/h] Express Lanes are special lanes that will be separated from the three existing non-tolled lanes by special striping and white plastic delineator sticks.
Express Lanes provide public transit buses, registered van pools, and emergency vehicles with a reliable, uncongested, non-stop, toll free route to their destination.
Because public transit buses, registered vanpools and emergency vehicles will not use up all of the space in the Express Lanes, individual drivers will be permitted to use the lane if they choose to.
To keep the Express Lanes from becoming congested, individual drivers are charged a variable toll that increases when traffic is heavy and goes down when traffic is light. The primary goal is not to generate revenue, but to keep the Express Lane free flowing as much as possible.
The MoPac Express Lanes will encourage people to carpool because they have the option to split the cost of the trip among each occupant in the vehicle.
The Express Lanes are not intended for everyday use. There will not be enough capacity to accommodate everyone who might want to use them.
Individual drivers will have to decide whether any particular trip is worth the toll being charged at the time they wish to use the Express Lanes.
Please see the Access Points page to see how and where you can access the Express Lanes after they are constructed.
2 lanes would have made it actually useful. I'm happy to pay extra if I can actually drive, but won't do it to be stuck behind a bus.I also think they could have done better and hooked us up with 2 lanes though.
Tried it out today... Promptly got stuck behind a van going 65mph. Cars in the normal lanes were passing us. Why the hell is this thing only one lane? WTF is express about it?
Yep, but it's those "soft" barriers you could drive through if you had to. It has a healthy sized shoulder so emergency vehicles could probably use that. If it weren't for all the debris on it, I would have used it to passJust wait until there's a wreck on the HOV lane. Did they do Houston stupid and put barriers up on both sides where towing vehicles can't get on?
It's criminal-racket put on by the Austin City Council and the contracting companies who build the roads. Austin's corrupt as they come, which is typical of a city run by Democrats.
I thought MoPac was a TxDOT project, no?
It's criminal-racket put on by the Austin City Council and the contracting companies who build the roads. Austin's corrupt as they come, which is typical of a city run by Democrats.
As for Mopac, where they could have EASILY built two-lanes with NO TOLLS, they instead decided that a single lane and one exorbitant toll was a better plan. It was delivered late (still isn't completely done) and over-budget.
All the while Governor Abbott has a panel of TX representatives auditing TXDOT and their prolific use of tollways in Texas. Abbott tasked them with coming up with a plan to make Texas toll-free by 2018. So far, they've found several tollways in Houston and Dallas that have been paid off for years, yet Texas residents are still being charged millions of dollars worth of tolls.
...where's the money going? ...why isn't it used state-wide to build more efficient infrastructure? ...why are democrats ruining my $#@!ing city with their moronic ideas!?
ETA: When I say "my city", I mean the city where I was born, where I met my wife, and the city we moved out of to get away from the traffic and growth. We aren't OUT completely, but Hutto has more farm dirt than concrete and that's the way I like it.
2 lanes would have made it actually useful. I'm happy to pay extra if I can actually drive, but won't do it to be stuck behind a bus.
Excuses are like assholes. Everybody got one.