Another stretch of Bay Area highway is adding express lanes, where drivers with the means can pay to access their own lane and speed past traffic. On Dec. 16, 18 miles of Interstate 80 in Solano County are slated to activate tolls on an express lane in the east- and westbound directions.
The toll lanes start at Red Top Road in Fairfield and extend to Interstate 505, near the Nut Tree, in Vacaville — a notoriously gridlocked section of I-80. The express lanes will be active from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, including weekends. Prices will fluctuate throughout the day depending on traffic. According to 511, Bay Area express lanes typically cost 50 cents to $15, although drivers have seen tolls hit $20 on occasion.
You must have FasTrak to use the toll lanes. A driver riding alone will pay full price, while two people can pay half price if their FasTrak Flex is set to “2.” Vehicles with three or more occupants, buses, vanpools and motorcycles can use the lanes for free as long as they set their FasTrak Flex to “3.”
Drivers who enter the express lane without FasTrak will be mailed a bill with a $10 penalty added.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s regional transit agency, touts the toll lanes as a way to “improve transit reliability and access for emergency response vehicles, and provide time savings and reliability for Solano County residents and others traveling through the county, including drivers headed to or from Sacramento, the Sierra Nevada, San Francisco, and the North Bay Wine Country.”
With the addition of the I-80 express lanes, there will now be tolls on parts of Interstate 580, state Route 237, Interstate 680, Interstate 880 and Highway 101 in the Bay Area.