Houston TX HOV-2 buy-in off to slow start

HOUSTON TX

HOV-2 buy-in

off to slow start

QuickRide, the HOV-2 pricing experiment on the Katy Fwy in Houston Tx is off to a slow start. Houston METRO could handle many more HOV-2 buy-ins than it is getting at the $2/trip toll being charged for the 21 km peak hour trip down the single lane reversible lane that runs in the center of the radial going west out of Houston.

Loyd Smith, the project director at Houston Metro, the transit agency which manages the area’s HOV lanes and which is running the pricing project, admits to some disappointment that patronage hasn’t been greater. It is varying between 140 and 160 per day (just 40 to 70/lane-hr) with some 500 transponders on issue. The good news is that those who use the buy-in like it, and it has got positive if limited press.

“The numbers won’t bowl anyone over,” says Loyd Smith. He adds that the scheme was devised to build up from a small start in order to check out the systems and procedures.

QuickRide operates weekdays 6:45 to 8am and 5pm to 6pm on a facility previously restricted to HOV-3 (vehicles with 3 or more occupants.) It runs only about 700 veh/hr HOV-3. As an HOV-2 in the 1980s, the facility got congested, so in 1988 the requirement was raised to the current HOV-3 in those hours.

But the lane is about half-empty at HOV-3-free. Reverting to HOV-2-free would have it overcrowded again — out of the frying pan into the fire. So under QuickRide it is allowing a controlled number of HOV-2s into the lane for $2/trip tolls collected via an Amtech electronic toll transponder — over 200k are in use on the Harris County toll roads in the area, and readers are mounted all round the area to provide data on traffic conditions to TranStar, a traffic monitoring center.

QuickRide started with 200 accounts Monday Jan 26. That morning 70 motorists showed up to use the facility. Since then the number of daily trips has been in the range 100 to 166, with 140 or so common by this, the 3rd week of April. By early May Houston Metro has signed up nearly 500 accounts.

We are dealing here with a facility with a comfortable capacity for LOS B or better of at least 2700 vehicles in the 135mins (1200/hrx2.25) which in fact carries only about 1500 HOV-3s — 1200 spare spaces. After 3 months it is getting 140 or so HOV-2 buy-ins to take those potential 1200 spaces..

“We’ve got a lot of room for growth. We’ve got a long way to go,” says Loyd Smith. The project is a 12 month trial and he’s aiming to report to the Metro board in July on what can be made of the project in the second half of the year.

“We’ve got to work out how price sensitive they are, whether we need to do more marketing, and what else can be done.”

They might drop the price, he says, if numbers haven’t picked up. Allowing single occupant buy-in is another option — as in other HOT lanes projects — but this would be a major policy change, and it is not to be recommended lightly. There has been heavy emphasis on keeping this high occupancy (HO).

Murphy’s work

The project got off to a difficult technical start. The PC running the tolling system had a hard drive crash in the first week, and there were problems with a vehicle count loop that for a few days cast doubt on the toll numbers. Police checking on violators have found it difficult to check cars for a transponder, hang tag and count occupants all at once, but Smith says he thinks that can be solved with a dashboard placard. Amtech with an excellent sub did a good low-cost job setting up the system, Smith says.

Outside the 6:45 to 8am and 5 to 6pm hours the Katy carpool lanes are HOV-2 so a major attraction of the scheme is for regular 2-person ‘pools’ who have been allowed in the facility before and after the HOV-3 requirement kicks in. The option of paying gives them more flexibility. Also a normal 3-person carpool which loses a rider previously had to avoid the lanes in the rush hours but can now get their accustomed fly-through for a fee.

HOV-enthusiasts should be encouraged that the scheme apparently benefits these environmental good-guys, and makes slightly better use of otherwise wasted capacity. The buy-in has had absolutely no adverse impact of course on the HOV-3s rides, of the kind opponents of HOT usually predict when toll buy-in is proposed. Metro’s customer relations people report “virtually no complaints” about the scheme.

Smith calls it a “modest success” after four months. (Contact Loyd Smith, Metro 713 739 3870)