“MoPac is rebounding; the last three months have been somewhere between $1.2 [million] to 1.3 million and still not quite back to the heyday when we were collecting about $1.8 million per month,” Chief Financial Officer Jose Hernandez said at the meeting.
Riders use the 11-mile, variably priced MoPac Express Lane extending from Parmer Lane in the north to Cesar Chavez near downtown Austin to bypass traffic congestion. The express lanes run parallel to the north and southbound MoPac freeway. The Mobility Authority has placed a minimum toll to use the express lanes, but the amount fluctuates depending how many vehicles are using the freeway, Hernandez said.
Although traffic went down during the COVID-19 pandemic and traffic has since been on the rise, traffic on MoPac has not bounced back the way it has on other roads, said Sylvia Shelton, the Mobility Authority's assistant director of communications.
“All of our other fixed price lanes went back to prepandemic levels; MoPac express lanes are the only ones that kind of haven't come back,” Shelton said.
The Mobility Authority's team listed reasons for the reduced toll collection include people working remotely.
“The rush hour used to be like 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and in the evening around 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., but because people aren't coming into the office, express lanes aren't necessarily getting quite as much traffic as they had prepandemic,” Shelton said.
