Toll Road Raising Rates Again to Cut Use

Owners of the controversial 91 Express Lanes, one of the most expensive tollways in the nation for motorists, announced Friday that they will raise rates again next month because of a jump in commuters.

The rate hike, the seventh in five years, is a device to force some motorists out of the increasingly congested pay lanes, which where built as an alternative to the swamped Riverside Freeway.

Officials at California Private Transportation Co. said the toll for drivers headed into Riverside County during the evening rush hour will rise Nov. 1 from $4.25 to $4.75.

“We have had strong growth in the afternoon commute in the last six months,” said Greg Hulsizer, general manager of the 91 Express Lanes. “More and more people are squeezing in. When that happens, our customers have to slow down, and we start to get complaints.”

The 10-mile tollway, which has two lanes in each direction, runs down the median of the Riverside Freeway from north Anaheim to the Orange County-Riverside County border. It opened in 1995.

Its owners estimate that use of the eastbound lanes has increased 15% on weekdays during the evening commute, a time when freeway traffic is often at a crawl. With commuters turning to the pay-as-you-go lanes for relief, the private road is reaching its capacity of 1,700 cars per lane per hour, Hulsizer said.

Such volumes are slowing traffic below the 65-mph threshold the owners prefer.

“Rate hikes are used to manage the lanes so they can be free-flowing,” Hulsizer said. “Our customers understand how the system works. We hope to see some of those people traveling a little earlier or a little later” to reduce eastbound traffic.

The tolls fluctuate during the day, rising as rush hour approaches.

Westbound motorists and those traveling on weekends or during certain off-peak hours will see smaller hikes: 10 cents to 20 cents per trip.

Late night and early morning tolls on weekdays will rise from 75 cents to $1 each way.

To moderate the impact of the rate hikes, members of the 91 Express Club (travelers who prepay to use the lanes more than 20 times a month) will get smaller discounts, hiking their tolls to $1 per trip.

Each weekday morning, about 250,000 commuters from the Inland Empire head into Los Angeles and Orange counties on the Riverside Freeway, one of the busiest in the state. The flow reverses itself during the evening.

The rate hike “is going to hit people’s pocketbooks, and it will affect their quality of life as they move into the more congested public lanes,” said Corona Councilman Jeff Miller, who uses the pay lanes to commute to his insurance office in Placentia.

“Until we find solutions, this cycle will keep getting worse,” he said.

Corona and Riverside County have filed separate lawsuits challenging an agreement between the state and toll lane owners that allowed the lanes to be built.

The contract contains a clause that gives the owners the power to veto major improvements to the Riverside Freeway if the roadwork would take customers away from the toll lanes.

Riverside County and Corona contend the lanes are actually contributing to the congestion because the agreement makes it nearly impossible for the state to widen the freeway and undertake other projects that could relieve congestion.