RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK — Triangle residents may be asked to pay for future traffic solutions.

The Regional Transportation Alliance met Tuesday to finalize their recommendations to improve traffic flow in the Triangle.

Some suggestions that received a high number of votes were using shoulders as lanes during peak travel hours, and setting up special high occupancy vehicle lanes.

Other options included a .05 cents sales tax in the Triangle used specifically for road improvement, and an increase in local gas tax.

The solutions were thrown out at the meeting in a non-traditional manner. Instead of using their voices, the members talked through computers.

The participants entered their ideas on laptops, which then appeared anonymously on an overhead for everyone to see.

"I think it's much faster," saysCary Mayor Koka Booth. "Every meeting you go to there's always somebody who wants to tell their side of the story, today we listened."

Members hope the "decision lab" will help them narrow down a long list of ideas to a short list of recommendations to send to theGeneral Assembly.

"It brought out what we hoped it would bring out, which is people's true feelings about each of the potential options to address this problem," says Smedes York, a member of the Regional Transportation Alliance.

The recommendations were not finalized Tuesday. The group will meet on March 15 to draft the final list.