An Evaluation of the 91 Express Lane Project Failure in California

This report provides an analysis of the 91 Express Lane project in California, identifying the reasons for its failure. The project, designed to reduce traffic congestion, ultimately faced numerous challenges. Key issues include persistent congestion, particularly during peak hours, despite the implementation of toll lanes. The report highlights the ineffectiveness of variable taxation and the creation of choke points, leading to accidents and further delays. The high cost of the project, coupled with the need for significant additional expenditure to address project management failures, underscores the project's overall lack of success. The report examines the impact of these factors on commuters and the overall goals of the project, offering a critical assessment of its shortcomings and the lessons learned.

Running head: 91 EXPRESS LANE
91 Express Lane
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91 Express Lane Project Failure
The 91 Express Lane California is developed to reduce the congestion of the traffic in the
California. It is one of the major transport highways of the east west state highway of the United
States of America. It connects the major cities and is the busiest highways of all time. This is
completely automated toll lane which is considered to be the median of the Riverside freeway.
All though there are many benefits of using the highway but there are numerous reason due to
which the project is considered to be a failure (Tao, Robson & Wang, 2019). The reason are
given below.
1) Congestion: The main reason for developing the high way and the toll lane was to avoid
congestion occurring in the Orange region. The users of the high way can easily take up
the normal lane to avoid congestion, in case if they are opting for better services, they can
use the toll lanes which is the fast track. Due to high demand of the services, the problem
of the congestion of the high way in the peak hours remained. However, the process of
tolling process was time consuming and resulted in further more congestion in the same
area.
2) The traffic has always been busy in that area for which the highway was constructed such
that the problem can be mitigated. But with the development of the highways and the
problem of the delay and the holding back increased. In the morning and the night hours
when the traffic is highest, the highway fails to provide services (Leef, 2019). Instead,
due to the popularity of the toll lanes and every one trying to use it at a time the hold back
in the traffic time increased further up to 3 to 4 hours in the period of demand. Thus
preparing a project worth $ 1.4 billion, the reports have to be regenerated and established

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for which $ 635,000 has to be spent giving a clear failure of proper project management
process which was incapable of analysing the traffic appropriately.
3) Choke Points in the Traffic: The point of intersection in the highway is one of the worst
as per the commuters of the highway. It not only causes further congestion, it is accident
prone as well. Numerous cases of accidents have been witnessed because of the poor
marking of the lanes on the highway. The 91 Express lane has a mixture of the general
lane and the fastrack which is again one of the causes of the accidents in the areas (Lee et
al., 2020).
4) Variable taxation at the tolls is another reason that can be stated as the reason for the
failure of the project as well. During the peak hours, the prices were decreased such that
the people can avoid congestions (Tao, Robson & Wang, 2019). However, the people
preferred take the short cut and for that they are prepared to pay any cost. The congestion
issue persisted then as well. Instead this caused the entire purpose of the project to be a
failure.

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References:
Swimmer, E., Gomez-Ibanez, J. A., & Casady, C. (2019). Toll-managed lane pioneers: Lessons
from five US states. Case Studies on Transport Policy, 7(3), 655-666.
Leef, G. (2019). Roads for the Future. Regulation, 42, 49.
Lee, E. B., Alleman, D., Thomas, D., & Kim, C. M. (2020). Integrating CA4PRS V. 3 road
widening schedule module into us highway early constructability process: California SR-
91 corridor improvement program case study. Transport, 35(1), 1-19.
Tao, X., Robson, P. J. A., & Wang, C. L. (2019, July). Project Failure, Error Orientation and
Learning from Failure. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2019, No. 1, p.
15732). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.