Atlanta is Getting HOTter

by Felipe Castrillon and Christopher Toth

HOT lanes, or High-Occupancy Toll lanes are coming to Atlanta. According to SRTA and GDOT, a 15 mile corridor on I-85 northeast of Metro-Atlanta will open as early as the last week of September as part of a $110 million grant from the US Department of Transportation.  HOT lanes are designed to mitigate congestion on highly travelled freeway corridors. The lanes will employ congestion pricing for one and two occupant vehicles, while vehicles with three or more people can ride for free. The goal is to maintain a constant speed of 45-50 mph for the HOT lanes, by increasing the price of the toll as congestion increases, thus reducing demand.

When the lanes open, all users of the HOT lanes will be required to have an electronic toll card, called Peach Pass which will be picked up by automatic toll tag readers. In order to register for a Peach Pass, users can access the Peach Pass website, which also has resources to pay violations, add value on the cards and obtain the latest information on the readers. Information on the I-85 managed lanes can be found at the State Road and Tollway Authority (SRTA) website.

HOT lanes have already been implemented in major metropolitan areas such as Seattle, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Denver, Orange County, San Diego, Houston, and Miami/Fort Lauderdale. The managed lanes have improved travel time reliability and higher speeds for many of the metropolitan areas.

The HOT lanes will also have a transit component as buses will ride for free. According to the SRTA website, 36 new passanger coach buses will be added. Also, two new park and ride lots will be added at Hamilton Mill on I-85 and Cedars Road on SR316, adding 1,900 new parking spaces. Additionally, the I-985 and the SR20 park and ride lots will be expanded to 400 spaces to support new Xpress service to Midtown Atlanta.

Georgia Tech is now leading innovative research on HOT lanes through the HOT project. Research focuses on many aspects such as effective capacity analysis, visualization tools for traffic data, weaving effects on capaity, data infill algorithms, arterial monitoring technologies, and others. Before and after implementation of HOT lanes will be analyzed in order to determine the effects on some of the aforementioned aspects. More information on the research project can be found by clicking here.

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