Transportation officials in Minnesota think they have a HOT solution to the state’s congested urban roadways, and some commercial vehicles will be able to make use of it.
On Monday, May 16, the Minnesota Department of Transportation added HOT lanes, or high-occupancy toll lanes, along an 11-mile stretch of Interstate 394 in Minneapolis. The state has dubbed the plan MnPass. It requires drivers to enroll in electronic E-ZPass systems to take advantage of the lanes.
HOT lanes are the latest trend in areas where overloaded highways and underutilized high-occupancy vehicle lanes are bringing traffic to a halt. If a state or city designates the car-pool lanes as HOT lanes, solo drivers can pay an electronic toll that varies based on the amount of congestion on the road, USA Today reported.
Although states have traditionally kept commercial vehicles out of the carpool and HOT lanes, Kevin Gutknecht, public affairs official with the Minnesota DOT office of communications, said the department will allow two-axle trucks up to 26,000 pounds in the MnPass lanes.
“We haven’t really allowed commercial vehicles to use the HOV lanes in the past,” Gutknecht said. “The decision was made to allow commercial vehicles of that size to use them because they’re very similar and about the same size as a bus, which are already allowed to use them.”
Although the single-passenger vehicles will now be allowed in the lanes, vehicles with two or more occupants, as well as buses and motorcycles, will still be able to use them for free.
Minnesota joins a growing list of states that have begun implementing the lanes into their traffic infrastructure. California, Texas, Utah, Colorado, Maryland, Florida, Virginia and Washington, DC, all either have or are in the process of building HOT lanes along congested roadways within the state, according to the Indianapolis Star.
Fans of HOT say the lanes are a blessing in an era of bumper-to-bumper traffic.
“It gives me a little bit of an edge,” Francis Ford, who uses the lanes on I-15 in San Diego, told USA Today. “You just go be-bopping along instead of sitting in all that traffic. It certainly is more convenient to ride in the (HOT lanes).”
Opponents, who have dubbed the pay-as-you-go roads “Lexus Lanes,” say the program is unfairly biased against low-income drivers, USA Today reported. Others say the lanes could easily become as congested as the rest of the roadway.
“Our biggest concern is that you would not be able to charge enough to keep people from using the lanes,” said Scott Hirons, chairman of the Committee to Save HOV. “There are employers … who would reimburse their employees to use HOT lanes.”
