Hot Lanes and Jazzy Pass

I found a great article on moving from road expansion based "planning" to road management based planning in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune called "Planners slam the brakes on expanding roads".

For some background, High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes weren't being utility to there fullest, so the region converted some HOV lanes to High Occupancy/Toll lanes. You can read more about HOT lanes on a previous post. Also as a note, HOV lanes have pretty much been a failure in Metro Vancouver as carpooling rates have been declining since the turn of the century here. Anyway, according to the article:

Commuters and suburban elected officials are fuming over the decision by planners to back away from the age-old compact in which the state tries to keep pace with suburban expansion.

Planners are instead embracing the idea of blanketing the inner metro area with a network of so-called "managed lanes" -- what critics have long dubbed "Lexus lanes" -- for buses and drivers who are willing to pay extra to skirt stalled traffic. Officials outside the Interstate 694-494 beltway say they see their hopes for new roads vanishing as a result, despite forecasts for major population growth.

On a completely different note in New Orleans, their month transit pass is call a "Jazzy Pass" which I think is an awesome name. What do you think?