This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Express car pool lanes are faster, safer and carry more traffic than individual, regular freeway lanes, the Utah Department of Transportation told the Legislature on Wednesday.
Speeds in the car pool lanes — formally called High Occupancy Vehicle, or HOV, lanes — average 10 miles an hour faster than regular lanes, Ahmad Jaber, a UDOT operations engineer, said in a required annual report about performance of the lanes.
Despite the faster speeds, Jaber said only 0.5 percent of all accidents occur in express lanes along the freeway stretches that offer them.
"The safety numbers are really greater in the express lanes," he told the Transportation Interim Committee.
Jaber said that during peak hours, express lanes carry about 3,200 people per hour at key spots compared to 1,760 an hour in a regular lane. That's because express lanes have an average of 2.2 people per car, while the other lanes average only 1.1 person each.
"Using express lanes is very cost-effective," Jaber said. "One of our strategic goals is to make the system work better, and they help us do that."
Jaber said that during peak hours, about two-thirds of the traffic in express lanes comes from passenger cars with two or more people.
About 30 percent comes from single-rider cars choosing to pay a toll by purchasing transponders. Jaber said UDOT has sold 9,153 transponders — which allow drivers to automatically pay tolls that vary between 25 cents and $1 depending on how busy various stretches are.
Also, about 4 percent of the express lane traffic comes from "clean fuel" vehicles, 2 percent comes from motorcycles, and 1 percent comes from buses — all of which may use the lanes for free.