Traffic on I-80 to the Bay Area is becoming a nightmare. Are toll lanes the answer?

Traffic on Interstate 80 between Sacramento and the Bay Area once was tame. Now it behaves erratically. One minute you’re cruising along at 70 miles per hour, the next you’re surrounded by a sea of brake lights. Stop. Go. Stop. Go.

Call it the Accordion Effect. For thousands of commuters, it’s become a major pain in the bumper.

Drivers check their smart phone traffic apps to find out if their 90-mile trip will take 90 minutes or twice that. The same goes for commuters between Davis and Sacramento, who each morning and afternoon must worry about getting over the Yolo Causeway.

Davis resident Stan Rosenstein says the drive to Sacramento is terrible no matter the time of day.

“If you were to leave Davis at 4 p.m., you may have to allow yourself 45 minutes to get to the Causeway,” he said. He uses the Waze phone app to plot a path on frontage roads. But those clog too.

“I’ve lived here 36 years,” he said. “The last 15 years, it has gotten worse. And even worse the last five years.”

Now, though, the I-80 corridor through Yolo and beyond may soon get a dramatic fix.

Caltrans, the state’s transportation agency, plans to add lanes to the freeway, including over the Causeway. And one key voice, Sacramento regional planning head James Corless, said he knows exactly what type of lanes those should be: Toll lanes.

The lanes, often called express lanes, would be open to carpools and buses, but also to solo drivers willing to pay for a faster ride. The price would fluctuate depending on the amount of traffic jamming adjacent lanes.

His agency, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, is working with Caltrans on project plans. For its part, Caltrans says it intends to build “managed lanes” through Yolo County. Caltrans said those lanes would serve as bus, carpool and zero emission vehicle lanes. And, when the time is right, as toll lanes too.

Construction could start as early as 2023.

The I-80 modernization effort comes as Sacramento pitches itself as a landing spot for entrepreneurs and tech companies looking for cheaper rents than they’ll find in the Bay Area, but with easy access back and forth to the tech world in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. That means Sacramento’s future economic growth could be hindered if something isn’t done about I-80 traffic.

“That corridor is a critical economic lifeline between the two regions,” Corless said. “A critical economic link for Sacramento. And we are in danger of severing that link if we don’t manage this corridor.”

Population, commuters on the rise

The problem is there are more commuters – and more of them are traveling long distances to work. Sacramento, Solano and Yolo counties grew by 24 percent in the last two decades, putting an increasing squeeze on I-80. The freeway serves as a main spine for local traffic in Yolo and Solano counties, as well as a long-haul freight corridor and the route for Sacramento residents who like to take advantage of Bay Area culture on the weekends.

Commute-hour traffic increased 13 percent at the Yolo Causeway during the dozen years that preceded 2018, according to Caltrans counts. It is projected to increase another 13 percent by 2023.

The traffic growth on I-80 is not dramatic, but there is enough traffic on the corridor now to painfully show that the hodgepodge of lane numbers – ranging from three to four to five – is creating stop-and-go traffic. That’s both costly and dangerous.

“There is no question something needs to be done,” says Lucas Frerichs, a Davis city councilman and SACOG member. “The issue with traffic backups every day in both directions results in valuable time loss for people going to work and school and a major impact on quality of life. It affects goods movement as well.”

A Caltrans reconstruction project is not yet tightly defined, but the concept is to create a continuous I-80 “managed” lane through Yolo County and into Sacramento, meeting up with an existing HOV near West El Camino Avenue in Natomas.

In particular, an analysis shows the state could squeeze an extra lane in each direction on the Yolo Causeway by moving the fast lane to the center divider, narrowing two of the four lanes by a few inches and extending the slow lane partly onto the right shoulder.

Caltrans also could use the existing bike and pedestrian path to extend the freeway to four lanes in each direction, each at a full 12 feet in width, the report says. That would require Caltrans to build a new bike and pedestrian bridgeway a bit to the north.

“We are getting geared up to do a traffic operational analysis to help guide us for the appropriateness of whatever type of managed lane,” Caltrans project manager Jess Avila said. “It takes time. This time next year, we might have something.”

Both Caltrans and local planners point out that they are looking to the intercity Capitol Corridor passenger trains to continue to improve their service and take some of the load off I-80. Those trains are popular, especially as congestion has grown. But train trips are often slower than car trips, and one-way tickets between Sacramento and San Francisco can be costly, ranging from $30 to $60.

Are toll lanes for the rich?

Corless said the new I-80 lanes should be multi-use lanes with a toll component from the get-go. They would be called express lanes because they also would accommodate carpools, buses and zero-emission vehicles.

Corless envisions turning all local carpool lanes into multi-use express toll lanes. But the lanes, like all freeway lanes, prompt sharp debate in a state that is attempting to reduce car travel, reduce emissions and construct transportation systems that work well for people of all income levels.

Critics have called them “Lexus Lanes,” affordable for wealthier drivers, while relegating other commuters to the more congested lanes. That may be OK in private retail, they say, but is it fair on public roads?

John Keller of Davis, a former state transportation planner, says the lanes also could pose an air pollution concern if “the improved access substantially benefited inter-regional commuters who want to live in Roseville and work in the Bay Area. How could the state prevent ‘encouraging’ such long commutes in terms of air quality and safety goals?”

Susan Handy, chair of transportation technology at UC Davis and a state consultant on transportation issues, said there isn’t much research yet on whether “managed” or “express” lanes induce more people to drive. They likely do at least some, she said. But environmentally, “it’s better than (building) a regular lane, that’s pretty clear.”

Corless, of SACOG, says he believes toll lanes would be a net benefit because toll revenues could be invested into improved bus service, which could allow express lanes to carry more people per hour than the adjacent “free-flow” lanes.

He calls the lanes “the high-speed internet of transportation.”

His agency recently gave Caltrans a $4 million grant to do environmental studies for managed lanes on I-80 in Yolo County, and another $4 million to do the same for Interstate 5 through Sacramento.

Handy, the UC Davis professor and transportation researcher, says traffic over the Causeway into Sacramento is so bad she won’t go into the city on Friday nights for dinner or entertainment. But, she says, she might rethink that if she has access to a toll lane.

“If there was some event we want to see, I might think about doing it,” she said. “But that is the induced travel effect. As a community, we have to think about what the goal is. Does this proposal really help us meet that goal?”

Staff reporter Phillip Reese contributed to this report.

This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 5:00 AM.