I can’t make heads or tails of that picture is the problem… and I don’t understand “congested early and spreads late.” Nevermind. Not important, I guess.
All I can suggest is getting a Mad Max-like ragemobile and punishing the jerkoffs.
Think about what would happen if these drivers didn’t do this. If all of the Fast Track drivers who use the cash lanes part of the way instead lined up in the Fast Track lane with you from the beginning, would the Fast Track lane move faster or slower?
What you need to do is write the governor and convince them to make the bridge a FastTrack only bridge with no cash allowed. Maybe even smash the toll booths entirely and put up high-speed toll readers. They’ve done exactly that on the Tappan Zee bridge already, so it’s not like it’s some unheard of thing. What’s surprising is they invested in making the change within a decade of the bridge set to be demolished (within a few years if they’re actually on time). So if New York can do it, so can you.
Oh wow, if it’s 30 minutes minimum that would be saved, I wouldn’t be able to resist getting over. I’d much rather be able to spend 30-90 fewer minutes in traffic rather than feel smug and stuck in traffic. It does sound badly designed. Ideally there should be something like Tom Tildrum says where all the Fast Track drivers could merge later, and so instead of being 60 minutes shorter for just some people, it would be 20-30 minutes shorter for everyone, and less risk of accident with someone doing something unexpected.
Like ReticulatingSplines said, I would be concerned about possibly causing an accident. And of less concern is that if I gamble that I can get over and shave time off, I might lose and be stuck and spend more time in the cash only lane. But without driving there I don’t know how likely either is.
I was assuming that there’s a bottleneck for the Fast Track that comes earlier, and once you are past the bottleneck the traffic spreads out, and that the bottleneck for the cash only comes later.
I was assuming that there’s a line that is very long for the Fast Track, but is moving very quickly compared to the cash lanes. So the cash lanes are not as physically long but take longer in time because they move slower. So moving in the cash lanes, then cutting into the fast-moving Fast Track lanes saves time.
Adding yet another wrinkle to the insanity is that the metering lights between the tolls and the bridge itself are generally set to favor the FasTrak lanes. All of the tollbooth lanes have FasTrak readers, so there’s no other reason to stick with a FasTrak lane.
The traffic engineers would prefer that all available lane space is used, so driving in a cash lane until about the second overpass and jumping into the FasTrak section may be the most efficient use of the road, even if it is generally seen as a dickish move.
The Golden Gate is FasTrak only, so is possible… The challenge is in the roads feeding these two different bridges. Roughly 22 lanes coming out of the Maze converge at the Bay Bridge tolls and are funneled down to five bridge lanes making for a stupendous bottleneck. At the GGB, three or four lanes coming off the bridge are fanned out to several toll lanes then back into three highway lanes, so the tolls are really just a minor bump in traffic.
Just don’t be “That Guy” who gets pointed out on the morning TV news. Today or yesterday, there was a greenish pickup who tried to sneak along in the really fast-moving HOV lanes until the very last moment before the posts started, but the drivers who’d been patiently waiting their turn weren’t letting them in, so they were creating a backup in the HOV.
One thing that probably won’t help Bay Bridge traffic is open-road tolling or what they call FasTrak Express on the Benicia-Martinez. The first time you legally fly through the tolls at 65, you’ll wonder why the technology isn’t being used on other bridges, but again, like the GGB, four lanes of freeway feed four lanes of bridge.
The “cash lanes” are a bunch of lanes that then converge into a few lanes, so the traffic comes later. The fast track lane is one lane that branches out into a bunch of lanes, so the traffic comes earlier. So, if you’re sitting in the fast track lane, the cash lanes to your left are moving along much, much quicker, but they are going to get caught in a cluster fuck down the road when it all converges together into a few lanes. The fast track lane is moving slow, but theoretically you are going to start moving much faster once it branches out (and moves faster because everyone has fast track). But, because everyone from the cash lanes crashes into the fast track lane at the last second it ends up being much slower.
Don’t know if this make more sense.
Much faster because the fast track lane is supposed to just be one lane that then branches out into a few lanes of just fast track entrances. But, because of the dive bombers, there is a giant convergence point of cars merging from four lanes into the fast track lane. Also, in the 30-90 minutes I’ve been sitting in the fast track lane, 30-90 minutes worth of people that were behind me all going to the same place are now ahead of me merging into the lane that I lined up in.
The only real solution to this problem is for everyone in the FastTrak lane to be close enough to the car in front so as to make the merge from the cash lanes impossible. It is especially useful here because it is not like someone stuck in the cash lanes is going to have a problem.
Won’t ever happen, though. This is a case of where being polite and letting someone in screws it up for everyone. And a ragemobile won’t work since there are tons of other people helping the cheaters merge.
Comes from a good economy, I guess.
The real solution is for the authority that runs the bridge is to get rid of the cash lanes and make all the lanes monitoring of the tag. If a car doesn’t have a tag, it takes a pic of their license plate and the owner is mailed a bill for the toll at a rate double the tag rate. Eventually more people will get the toll tag, and the authority will save money for not having to pay toll booth operators.
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Delay of 30 to 90 minutes seems almost insane. I drove around Bay Area a lot but usually avoided rush hours.
I think this is the “Maze” which gotpasswords refers to. Traffic from 80 west, 580 west, 880 north, 24 west and 980 all wants to cross the Bridge to San Francisco.
[hijack]Start an IMHO thread, anyone? What are other traffic mazes?
I think tags are only an interim thing. When they were introduced, licence plate recognition probably didn’t work well enough to be used for this, but now there are many toll roads where it is the only tolling device. If you don’t pay within the time window, then you get sent a bigger bill. So, no tags required and you have a toll account that you keep topped up or get stung with a penalty payment.
Crossing a solid white line is not officially illegal in California. Nowhere is it mentioned in the California Vehicle Code.
The CA DoT manual says “crossing the line is discouraged,” and cops may well often write a ticket for it (or try to get it under something else, like a general “unsafe lane change”). Or it might be combined with something else that makes it illegal (such as passing an “exit only” sign or going over an arrow. But crossing a solid white line, by itself, is not officially prohibited. And the toll plaza doesn’t have any exit signs or arrows, so it might be one of the spots where you’re most in the clear to do so.
As an aside, there is a big problem with toll cheats. In California you don’t get a license plate when you buy a new car - you get a generic cardboard tag and something you put in your window showing your car is legal. You don’t get the tag until weeks later. So, new car owners often zip through the FastTrak lanes and don’t get charged.
Whatever, the point is that you get rid of the cash pay lanes, then there’s no stoppage. Several states have done this across the country with regard to the toll roads, primarily to increase traffic flow and save money.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
As an aside, there is a big problem with toll cheats. In California you don’t get a license plate when you buy a new car - you get a generic cardboard tag and something you put in your window showing your car is legal. You don’t get the tag until weeks later. So, new car owners often zip through the FastTrak lanes and don’t get charged.
[/QUOTE]
Not for much longer. Starting fairly soon - think it’s 2018 - cars will be sold with serialized temporary plates. No more driving off the lot with a license plate-shaped ad for the dealership.
[QUOTE=septimus]
I think this is the “Maze” which gotpasswords refers to. Traffic from 80 west, 580 west, 880 north, 24 west and 980 all wants to cross the Bridge to San Francisco.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, that delightful tangle is the Maze (aka MacArthur Maze) I refer to. An endless tidal wave of traffic getting choked down to far too few lanes.
Short of that, another solution would be to use the FastTrack transponder to detect the drivers that enter using a cash lane, only to later improperly change lanes into the FastTrack lanes, and charge them an extra lane-bomber fee.
But there’s always going to be the same number of cars ultimately needing to use your one lane, so everyone who needs it is going to have to merge in sooner or later. Merging everyone in by some earlier point just moves the choke point back and fills the one lane with even more cars earlier. That’s putting more traffic into less space.
It seems to me that the best solution overall is the one that maximizes the use of the available road. The average commute would be shortened if enough of the cars ultimately wanting the fast track stayed in the cash lanes (and vice versa, I suppose) long enough for the speeds in the lanes to equalize, with drivers then taking turns in an orderly fashion at the end to get into their destination lane.
I get where you’re coming from, and honestly, my first instincts are largely the same as yours, but I think our instincts may be counterproductive here.
I think the average amount of time it took for the same number of cars to ultimately get through would be the same*, but if everyone lined up in the order they showed up then the average time would be spread out over all of the cars and not concentrated in the cars that are following the rules. As it stands now, I sit in this lane much longer, while people who showed up way later are getting through much sooner than me and passing their wait time along to me.
Picture it this way. If I’m the 100th car in line and everything works the way it’s supposed to work, then I get through 100th. If I’m the 100th car in line, and cars 101 through 1000 show up after me and all speed to the front, yes, the same 100 cars are getting through in the same time period as before, but I’m still sitting in line at number 97 when what should have been my turn comes around.
*it would probably be faster though because there wouldn’t be this hour glass effect of five lanes crashing into one in a ten yard space.