UPDATE: Morning Commuters Using New Highway 101 Express Lanes On The Peninsula
REDWOOD CITY (KPIX) -- New express lanes along Highway 101 running from Highway 85 in Santa Clara County to Whipple Ave. in Redwood City opened in time for Friday's morning's commute.
"This will be transformative for commuters in this corridor, make no mistake about it," said Kevin Mullin, a California state assemblyman. Mullin said that this commuter corridor between San Francisco and San Jose is the most economically productive in the state.
The express lanes will operate from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays but will be free for vehicles with three or more people inside. Single-occupant cars or those with two people will pay a toll and all drivers need to have FasTrak.
"Projects like this are making a difference. They're providing significant savings to those who use the corridor to go to work, go to appointments, centers of education or wherever they need to go," said Carolyn Gonot, general manager of the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority.
Express lanes recently opened along a stretch of Interstate 880 between Oakland and Milpitas. The carpool lanes were converted in October 2020 so more drivers had the option to move faster along the freeway by paying the toll.
"Moving more people in fewer cars through our most congested corridors. That's what express lanes are all about," said John Goodwin, public information officer for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. "They really don't generate that much cash. In an ideal world they don't generate any cash at all because the lane would be filled with carpoolers or buses."
While money is not the goal, revenue from tolls increased 23 percent from the second quarter of 2021 to the third quarter. Drivers are moving at a faster speed in the express lanes, between 16 to 18 miles per hour faster than other lanes during peak hours.
"Time spent in traffic is not time that is productively spent. Consequently, that's a drag on the economic efficiency of the whole Bay Area," Goodwin said. "The numbers are clear. People are voting for express lanes by using them and the usage numbers are rising steadily."
In the most recent quarter with data available, trips on that stretch of I-880 were approaching 4 million, more than a million above the same quarter in the prior year. Express lanes will continue to expand in the Bay Area including on Highway 101, extending north later this year.
