Position of FastTrak Lanes

FasTrak is an electronic device that allows people who cross the bridge from Oakland to San Francisco to pay the toll without having to stop and open up their wallets. When you’re in a FasTrak-only lane with a FasTrak transponder, life’s a breeze. However, when you’re in a Cash/FasTrak lane with a FasTrak, you wonder what’s so great about the system, because you’re stuck behind a bunch of people stopping to pay cash. It’s often hard to reposition oneself into an appropriate lane. The problem, as I see it, is to make it as easy as possible for both types of drivers, those paying with FasTrak and those paying with cash, to be in an appropriate lane.

Here are the current and proposed placement of the lanes:

(source: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/services/fastrak/June07/SF-Oakland_Bay-REV-8-07.pdf)

Here’s another picture of the proposed placement:

(source: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/services/fastrak/New_FasTrak_Lanes.pdf)

I think both the current and proposed arrangements of lanes are bad because neither makes it as easy as possible for drivers of both types to be in the right type of lane.

The possibilities to consider involve each type of driver in every lane.

(Note: In reality, there are FasTrak-only lanes and Cash/FasTrak lanes (not cash-only lanes) but, for the sake of simplicity, I will refer to the Cash/FasTrak lanes as ‘cash-only lanes’ because no one who has FasTrak wants to be in one of those Cash/FasTrak lanes anyway—they want to breezing through a FasTrak-only lane.)

So the problems are (1) a FasTrak driver in a non-FasTrak lane, and (2) a cash driver in a FasTrak-only lane. The other two possibilities, (3) a FasTrak driver in a FasTrak lane and (4) a cash driver in a cash lane, are not problems. Let me deal with problem (2) first. If you look at the picture, you will see that there are some lanes that suddenly become FasTrak-only lanes. There’s a long rectangle of gray/white (a regular lane) that suddenly turns yellow (suddenly becomes a FasTrak-only lane) as you approach the toll plaza. This causes problem (2) to exist. A cash driver may suddenly find herself in a FasTrak-only lane and be forced to change lanes in order to get into a cash lane. I would solve this by never making a normal lane suddenly become a FasTrak-only lane. All FasTrak lanes should begin the way that some of them do now, which is as a wedge, from nothing (from in between two existing regular lanes). That way a cash driver could never be in a FasTrak lane just by continuing to drive along in the same lane. In other words, cash drivers won’t ever have to change lanes in order to pay with cash.

Problem (1) is similar. A FasTrak driver might be driving along in a normal lane as he approaches the toll plaza and then find that the nearest FasTrak lane is 2 or 3 lanes away from him and realize that he has to change 2 or 3 lanes to get into a FasTrak-only lane. This happens today and it’s annoying. Sometimes it’s not even worth changing lanes. I’ve heard people say that what’s good about FasTrak is only that it’s convenient when you don’t have cash on hand—it’s not any faster than paying with cash. Anyway, to solve this problem, I would disperse FasTrak lanes so that there was a FasTrak lane every 3rd lane. If there were a FasTrak lane every 3rd lane, then the farthest you would ever have to go to get into a FasTrak lane would be one lane. If there were 4 adjacent lanes numbered 1-4 in ascending order from left to right and Lanes 1 and 4 were FasTrak-only lanes, then if you were a FasTrak driver and found yourself in Lane 2 or 3, then you would have to move only one lane, either from Lane 2 to Lane 1, or from Lane 3 to Lane 4. FasTrak lanes should be dispersed, not clustered.

There is one last thing I would do differently from the people that are planning the new arrangement of FasTrak lanes. I would never split one FasTrak lane into two FasTrak lanes. FasTrak drivers are happy when they’re in FasTrak lanes. It’s a lot faster than cash once you’re in the right lane and there are no cash drivers in front of you trying to get out of your lane. The reason that I would never split one FasTrak lane into two is that the benefit that a FasTrak driver gets by switching from a slow FasTrak lane to a fast FasTrak lane is negligible when compared with the benefit that a cash driver would receive if there were another cash lane next to him instead of another FasTrak lane.