Please explain HOT to me? I'm new.

Okay, I'm new to this board and new as a driver. I am glad this is here to help me get to work with out losing my mind on the regular 95. Now I have read on here that there is some kind of HOT lane being proposed. Well could someone kindly explain what that is all about. Virginia is so greedy and it seems like since they aren't getting any money out of the HOV, they need to do something to make a profit. Anyway, explain away...

Roni

New driver who's not fond of HOV backups. I thought HOV's purpose was to eliminate that?

HOT is very simple. Its the kind of corporate give away all too common in this country. Basically, you take a free road, deed it to a corporation for 60 years, promise you will build no new roads that would compete against the corporation, and allow the corporation to chage people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to ride on the road. In exchange, the corporation extends this road 20 miles further south, reconfigures the existing space to accommodate 3 lanes instead of 2, and the corporation gets to charge users a fee for mileage depending on the number of users on the road. It is expected that the fee will be, at a minimum, 50 cents per mile during rush hour. Thus, Stafford to Washington DC will cost 20.00 each way.

Now to sell the idea, the corporation intially says it will accommodate slugging. However, the proposal is that there will not be human toll collectors, and therefore no real way to count the number of people in a vehicle. After implementation, the corporation will then say, you know what, we can't make money off this deal trying to count people, so everyone pays the toll. Thats the end of slugging becuase there will be no need to carry riders. Then everyone will pay this toll, and the commute will be two hours each way everyday. That's what happened in California and what is likely to happen here...

I just want to compliment CallMeMrSLug for the best synopsis of the HOT debacle I've ever read. In two paragraphs, he described the situation exactly. I've never been able to do it in less than a short novella. Good work! [:)]

Yes and as always, in the end, "Free America" will get screwed!