It was winter and Gibbs Rainock was making the drive home from Sandy to Clearfield, excited to see his new baby girl, Willow, after a long day at work. However, his regular 45-minute drive took three hours instead.

"You never know what the hold-up is," said Rainock, who makes the 45-mile commute twice daily.

In this case, the hold up was a guy changing a tire on the side of the road.

"Cars weren't moving," Rainock said. "There was rubbernecking. ... People weren't paying attention."

To make it to work by 9 a.m., Rainock has to leave by 7:30 a.m. The drive home takes even longer, he said.

Many people like Rainock fight congestion problems during the commute to and from Salt Lake City on I-15.

"It's so unpredictable," Rainock said. "You just have no idea how to plan."

Commuters' pain hasn't gone unnoticed, however. Change is on the horizon. On May 21, transportation officials presented plans to Utah lawmakers to implement a system called peak traffic congestion pricing on the stretch of I-15 from Provo to Ogden.

Congestion pricing is a system of charging drivers a fee to use highly trafficked roads.

"Its main purpose is using pricing to guarantee travel time," said Linda Hall, a spokesperson for the Utah Department of Transportation.

Other states around the country such as California and Florida have already implemented congestion pricing to manage their busy freeways.

Of the four types of congestion pricing, lane charging would be Utah's choice, Hall said. The "hot lanes model" involves charging commuters in specific lanes on a selected part of road. The carpool lane on I-15 is an example of the hot lanes model already in place in Utah. The price of driving in these hot lanes would fluctuate depending on how congested the freeway is at any given time.

"The more congested it is, the higher the toll," Hall said. "The less congested it is, the lower the toll."

The point of charging a toll, Hall said, is to get drivers to change their behavior by choosing not to drive during peak congestion hours.

"If it costs them a lot to be there, they're going to do something different," Hall said.

Congestion pricing has benefits, Hall said.

"If you pay a price, you're guaranteed you're going to get a good travel time on that corridor," she said.

Chuck Chappell, the Executive director for the Wasatch Front Regional Council, presented to lawmakers reasons why Congestion pricing needs to happen on I-15.

"Our freeways are failing because the demand is too high," Chappell said. He said lawmakers need to be planning for the future because the use of and dependence on I-15 will only increase over the next 20 years.

Experts said in 2006, the average driver spent 17 hours delayed by traffic per year. By 2030, drivers are expected to spend 29 hours a year in traffic.

Chappell denounced other alternatives such as building more highway lanes. Officials would not be able to build enough highway lanes to keep up with demand.

"We can't build our way out of congestion," he said.

While Chappell and other traffic officials agreed that congestion pricing might be the only way to manage the congestion on I-15, some legislators were very much against it.

"Corridor and tolling makes me shake," said Sen. Karen Mayne, D-District 5.

If congestion pricing becomes a mainstay in Utah, it will affect Mayne's district heavily. Much of the west side is a transit area.

Mayne's main worry was that congestion pricing would push commuters who don't want to pay the I-15 toll into neighborhoods, causing immense burdens on residential streets.

"If that [I-15] is tolled, they will bleed all over my residential area," Mayne said. "They will bleed everywhere."

Mayne said she hoped people would move to public transit or carpooling instead to alleviate congestion.

"I'd have to have my nose rubbed in it to go for this," Mayne said.

But Rainock doesn't see congestion pricing as the solution to his commute problems.

Rainock, who now carpools to work with friends, said commuters should carpool more or start using public transportation.

"I think it's a terrible idea," Rainock said. "It's a public road. Your taxes should already pay for it."

Copyright Brigham Young University 3 Jun 2008