While the bills to remove the tolls before the 2 year test period were denied, we still have actions and hope to remove the tolls and restore 2 person carpools. We have asked legislators to include a line item in the budget to pay for a study to evaluate the success/failure of the #405ETL. This study would be conducted by a 3rd party (NOT WSDOT) and would include stakeholders from the public. The intent is to determine what the actual success criteria should be and then to determine if the tolls meet that criteria.
A letter was sent to the chairs of the transportation committees with bi-partisan support from both the House and the Senate, making this request. (read it here)
Legislative budget request Letter
We would like to thank each of these legislators who signed for working with us to see that this issue gets an unbiased evaluation. Please take a moment to once again contact your legislators and, if they signed this letter, thank them for their support, or if they did not, to encourage them to support this action. The goal is to get a truly successful, acceptable solution.
If you don’t have your legislators’ office numbers on speed dial yet, you can find their phone numbers and send them an email from here.
A group of us are working hard on this issue with the limited resources we have. There are many expenses involved which we have been paying out of our own pockets. If you would like to help, please consider clicking the Donate button on the website and contributing the equivalent of a few toll payments.
Cheers,
The Leadership Team at Stop405tolls.org
Stop405Tolls 
Yeah, and I hope they don’t consider TRAC as “independent” like WSDOT was implying before for a previous evaluation. I remember a lot of communication claiming a 3rd party study by “the UW” by WSDOT when in fact WSDOT has a direct partnership with TRAC (UW, WSU, WSDOT)
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[…] that included public stakeholders to participate in evaluating how the toll lanes are performing. We are repeating this request again along with having a disinterested 3rd party to decide the success based on the criteria put forth […]
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“legislature encourages the commission to expedite consideration of the elimination of tolls during evening nonpeak hours, weekends, and holidays”… this is already in place, why does this need consideration? Its ‘open to all’ during all these times
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Harms is a charlatan… If I give him what he wants and we have 2+, no toll and one more lane back..what then? How do we grow this city by a million people before ST3 is delivered and have no ability to further widen lanes…how do we move people around? YOur defense of solo drivers and the underprivileged doesn’t answer any of these questions..
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Defense of solo drivers? Huh? 85% – 90% of all vehicles in the HOV lane were 2 person carpools prior to conversion. Now 85% of all vehicles in the HOT lanes are solo drivers. Giving people a way to avoid contributing to trip reduction is going in the exact opposite direction they are trying to do. We should be promoting carpooling. The easiest way to get someone out of their car is to put them in someone else’s car. Transit is good where it works, but that requires expensive park and rides (at $50,000/parking space) and people are still driving when they use the bus. Much more. Go see http://bit.ly/tollslides
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