

Light on freeway express lane driver#
But don’t get rid of those old ones just yet, the only time the driver would need to use the switchable transponder is when traveling in the L.A. New stickers are replacing the older switchable transponders for driving the 91 Express Lanes.

Safety first, regardless of what the speed limit is.’” If a driver is tailgating you, the DMV handbook says to maintain a safe distance from the vehicle in front of you and let the aggressive driver pass. “We always tell people, ‘maintain your speed, check your side mirror, activate your turn signal, and move over.

“It’s driving like this that activates road rage,” CHP Officer Miguel Guerrero of the Riverside office said. It’s not worth angering an aggressive driver. In this case, the California Highway Patrol recommends that if you’re going the speed limit or close to it, and someone approaches behind you with flashing lights, put on your turn signal and just move over. If they pull up behind you and see that you're actually all by yourself, you can expect to see some flashing lights and receive at least a $400 ticket.Q: Peter Chang asked what he should do if he is driving 5 mph over the speed limit and a vehicle approaches him flashing its lights for Chang to move over.Ī: This scenario happens often: you’re on the freeway basically doing the speed limit and an impatient speeding driver comes up behind you, tailgating and flashing their lights for you to get out of the way. CHP officers are patrolling those lanes, and they'll get a signal if you're using the carpool switch on your FasTrak tag. What happens if you try to cheat the system?īut if you're thinking of cheating the system, watch out. Then, look up and check the toll for the next zone, so you can decide if it's worth the money to stay in the lane, or move over to the right and save some cash. Even if the price on the digital signs goes up, you'll pay what the sign originally said until you get to the end of the current zone. Once you enter the lane, you've locked in your price.

On a typical day, the average toll during peak commuting hours is about $7, all computed automatically, in real time, based on the traffic. So then, if the lane starts to empty out, the price goes down - as low as 50 cents.
Light on freeway express lane drivers#
It can go as high as $15, at which point most drivers will say it's not worth it. When the express lane starts to fill up, the price starts to rise. That's why the tolls are always going up and down. But the theory only works in practice when the right balance of cars exists between the express lane and the regular lanes. That's the theory behind toll express lanes: a three-person carpool lane in which the leftover space gets sold off. Caltrans also studied the option of switching to a three-person carpool lane, but it turned out that would have the opposite problem: not enough cars would use it, and so the rest of the lanes - the "general-purpose lanes," in transportation speak - would get slower.īut what if they could sell off the extra room in that 3-person carpool lane to drivers who are really in a hurry? It turns out that would take enough cars out of the general-purpose lanes to make everyone go faster, and it would also mean less pollution from stop-and-go traffic. They could build new ones, but they'd be just as slow as regular lanes. Google Pauses San Jose Campus Construction, Remains Committed to City How is pricing for express lanes determined?īut how do they come up with the prices? That goes back to why the lanes were created in the first place: they're using the laws of supply and demand to make traffic move faster.Ĭaltrans did a study and found out the old two-person carpool lanes were just getting too congested.
