Webinar: Faster Freeways – Exploring the Potential of Pricing
Today, freeway congestion is surging back to pre-COVID levels and our transportation system is struggling to keep the Bay Area moving. Drivers are experiencing slower freeways, while transit agencies grapple with funding and reliability challenges. Though transit ridership is slowly recovering, and infrastructure improvement projects are underway, freeway travel is expected to worsen if we don't shift gears.
To envision a better future where overall driving goes down and travel times improve, the MTC's Next Generation Bay Area Freeways Study is exploring the feasibility of all-lane freeway tolling. Pricing freeways can reduce freeway travel time, encourage more sustainable travel behavior and fund public transit and road safety improvements that will make it easier for future generations to embrace viable alternatives to driving.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission will conduct a public webinar as part of the Next Generation Bay Area Freeways Study, which seeks to better understand the feasibility of all-lane tolling on freeways with robust parallel transit in 2035. The webinar will present two future scenarios of the Bay Area – one with freeway pricing, and one without. Participants will then weigh in on the tradeoffs between those two scenarios and provide feedback on potential pricing strategies and complementary strategies that could be funded with freeway toll revenue.
There will be two opportunities to attend the virtual event live. Both presentations will be the same, so participants need only attend one webinar. Join the webinar via Zoom on either Tuesday, November 7, 12-1:30pm or Wednesday, November 8, 5-6:30pm.
No registration is required in order to attend. Public input will be used to further refine the study’s analysis before a final recommendation is presented to the Commission in 2024.
For those who cannot attend live, a video recording will be posted to mtc.ca.gov/FasterFreeways. Feedback and questions can be submitted by emailing info@bayareametro.gov.
