SR 91 Express Lanes: Economic and Financial Sustainability Report

The report provides an analysis of the SR 91 Express Lanes project in California, focusing on its economic and financial sustainability. It highlights the project's success in implementing express toll lanes, contributing to congestion-free routes, and providing benefits such as electronic toll payments and free travel for high-occupancy vehicles. The report emphasizes the project's success as a public-private partnership and its role in encouraging public transport use, reducing fuel consumption, and minimizing air pollution. The analysis also explores how the strategies employed in the SR 91 project can be applied to other areas of sustainability, emphasizing the importance of aligning socially responsible activities with core project operations to achieve success and create a positive social impact. The report concludes that the SR 91 project serves as a model for sustainable infrastructure projects.

Running head: ECONOMIC & FINANCE SUSTAINABILITY
ECONOMIC & FINANCE SUSTAINABILITY
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Introduction
SR 91 Express Lanes project in California is a four-lane express toll lane which is built in
the center of southern California. The tolls charged at the road differ by the direction of the
travel, time of trip etc. California private transportation company financed the project and built it
successfully. The CPTC transferred the ownership to the state. The government took so many
measures to contribute to the environment protection. It tried to limit the uses of private cars and
reduce air pollution.
Discussion
1. Major successes
SR 91 express lanes have been successful in adding express lanes in the middle of the
highway lane. It provided a four-lane toll facility in one of the highly congested and busiest
highways of the United States. The highway has been known for its congestion-free pricing
roads. It has become one of the rarest highways to provide congestion-free routes. The difference
between toll roads and congestion-free roads is that toll roads are unsuccessful in delivering free-
flowing lane. The SR 91 is also successful in providing free travels that are no charges for high
occupancy vehicles like buses (Lee, Thomas & Alleman, 2018). These lanes are generally built
in the areas where there are no alternative routes. The higher movement of vehicles helps the
highway in giving such concessions. The opening of electronic accounts of all the travellers, the
automatic charges are detected while crossing the check-points. This benefit has reduced the long
individual queues that used to form in the traditional highway roads. The assessment of fees
automatically and the deduction of toll fees electronically is one of the successes of the express
lane. SR-91 express lanes are proved to be a successful public-private partnership. The project

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helped the government to have investments from the private sector in public transport
infrastructure projects (Weaver, 2017).
The reason behind charging taxes on vehicles is the motive of making them understand that the
use of vehicles excessively creates air pollution. Government need to charge these taxes with the
motive of minimizing pollution. The highways which are successful in collecting these toll
charges are appreciated. SR-91 is one of those successful express lanes who successfully collect
toll charges are contributing to help governments in making policies stricter for environment
protection. It is a multimodal corridor management infrastructure project which is successfully
serving 280000 vehicles per day. The benefit of this multi-modal project plan helps in integrating
the real-time information about conditions of the highways, bus and rail transit, parking
availability etc. (www. ops.fhwa.dot.gov, 2020)
The provision of travel information to the travellers by sending changeable messages
have made the commuters of the highway aware of the actual travel time of the vehicles they are
using. In addition to it, the travellers can check the alternative services which of transport which
is taking less time and cost is also reasonable. This is an innovative approach to increase
travellers interest in public transport. The highway becomes successful in adding a social
objective to it. The higher use of public transport will reduce the time consumption for
completing the journey by private vehicles. In addition to it, the public will be benefitted by the
reasonable cost of these high occupancy vehicles (Badireddi & Davis, 2020).
2. How you can apply them to other areas of sustainability
As per a research conducted by the government of the US by organizing an e-survey of
6000 employees respondents, the project has helped employees of various sectors to reduce their
travel time and cost. The public is encouraged to use public transport. The limited use of public

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transport helps in reducing the consumption of fuel and thus limiting the carbon emission. This,
in turn, helps in reducing air pollution of the city. This helps the project to achieve sustainability
(Shbaklo, Davis & Cui, 2016). The parking detection technology and way fining technology
have helped the travellers making their driving easier. Though helping the public by introducing
these digital apps, the project has created a social impact on the public. More and more travellers
want to use it as their regular route of travel. The survey conducted showed that one-third of the
travellers who were driving alone their private cars left private cars and started travelling in
public transport. This happened because these one their daily travelling employees were price-
conscious. They were made aware of their loss of time and money by real-time information with
the help of a mobile app (Poole, 2017). The other infrastructure projects can also take help from
these kinds of innovations. SR-91 highway main aim of generating revenue for the government
was served by its traveller oriented services like parking facilities and free charges for high
occupancy vehicles. On the other hand, it achieved one of the social objectives of reducing
pollution of the atmosphere by an innovative strategy. Businesses must understand that socially
responsible activities should be made aligned with the core activities of any project or entity
(Solow, 2019). This increases the chance of success for the same project. In case of the express
lane, the air pollution was minimized because the express lane business was aligned with the air
and the moving vehicles, which is polluting it. Others can learn how to recognize one CSR
activity with their core operation. This will create a social impact and help in improving the
success and sustainability of the project or entity (Choi & Lee, 2018).
Conclusion
Thus the paper concludes that the SR 91 Express Lanes project in California was a
successful private-public partnership. The infrastructure project has taken many steps for the

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benefits of its travellers and became one of congestion-free pricing highway lanes. The
innovative action was taken for making travelling time, and other information available to each
person helped to create awareness among many people. The project helped in reducing the
average fuel consumption of the city. The use of public transport helped to reduce air pollution in
the area. Any other infrastructure project partnerships can learn from it that how one can be
socially responsible by operating the core operations in a different way and create a social impact
to be successful and sustainable.

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References
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