Cool about HOT lanes

PROVO — The majority of Utah County residents don't want to see drivers using car-pool lanes on I-15 without a passenger, according to a new poll.

In late August or early September, the 38-mile stretch of car-pool lanes between 600 North in Salt Lake City and University Parkway in Orem will become high-occupancy toll or HOT lanes.

For $50 a month, the HOT lanes — now being called express lanes by the Utah Department of Transportation — will allow vehicles with a single occupant to join car-poolers, buses, motorcycles and clean-fuel vehicles in the far left lane.

Most Utah County residents say that's a bad idea, according to a poll conducted this week for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV.

Of the 203 Utah County residents surveyed by Dan Jones & Associates, 57 percent said they are opposed to allowing single drivers to pay for the right to use the lanes. Thirty-six percent said they're in favor of the decision.

Eighty-five percent of those who responded are frequent users of I-15, according to the poll. Support for HOT lanes among that group was only slightly higher at 37 percent, while opposition remained the same.

With both questions, there's a 7 percent margin of error.

The results didn't come as a surprise to Darrell Cook, executive director of the Mountainland Association of Governments. MAG is designated by the federal government as the transportation-planning entity for Utah County.

"Car-pool lanes are a new thing to Utah County, and HOT lanes are a brand-new thing to the entire state of Utah," Cook said. "It's something that's going to take some time for the public to understand and get used to."

HOT lanes are a traffic-management tool that have worked well in other states, Cook said.

Instead of letting excess capacity in the car-pool lanes go to waste, UDOT will sell a limited number of window stickers permitting drivers to pay for the right to use the lanes.

"That doesn't mean we'll oversell and the value of car-pooling go away," said Nile Easton, UDOT spokesman. "What it does is move traffic in the general-purpose lanes into the open capacity in the car-pool lane and allows general-purpose lanes to move faster."

Motorists who want to use the lanes but travel alone will have to purchase one of the 600 permit stickers to place in the front and back windows of their vehicles. The stickers are expected to be made available online in July.