PING!
Those commies should ease congestion by doing away with the carpool lane and letting everyone use it.
Thanks Tol. I think they’re just trying to get some vehicles into those lanes. What would have been cute would have been to auction those passes.
HOV should be eliminated. It starts w/Congress, that allows the feds to pay states/municipalities for implementing/maintaining an HOV plan.
States eager to suck up that cash push this system that makes day to day life harder for the majority.
I always laugh cynically whenever I hear government say something like “safety first” while at the same, in order to provide a smooth HOV ride, create merge lanes on the left side of the road. If you live near DC, try riding around where 66 comes onto 495 and you’ll see how HOV-cash puts “safety second”.
I’ve seen the before and after of HOV implementation on commutes I was traveling at the time. Traffic was ALWAYS worse from there on in, in that area.
Another interesting HOV note- typically, when an accident occurs, traffic gets worse right? I’ve been driving at times when there was an accident so bad that they actually lifted HOV restrictions.
Funny thing is, traffic was actually better with the accident and no HOV compared to no accident and HOV in place.
That fact alone should tell everyone that HOV hinders throughput.
I would bet that a large percentage of the people in these HOV lanes on any given day would have been driving with more than one person in the car, anyway - couples commuting together, people with babies (yes, one baby in a car seat qualifies you for HOV), etc. Not at all sure that all that many people actually go through the hassle of carpooling so that they can make use of the HOV lanes.
Meanwhile these things are a safety hazard and an impediment to the flow of traffic. The safety hazard comes from having cars whizzing down the HOV lane at 100+ km/h feet away from lanes that are sometimes (often) not moving at all. And then the fun when someone decides to jump into that HOV lane (often over the solid lines indicating that entering the HOV lane is not permitted) at low speed while cars in it approach at speed (rear enders - seen a bad one last week due to this). Not to mention the hazards of having people, often too late, trying to get from the HOV lane across lanes of traffic to make an exit.
Finally, there’s the fun on my drive home, where the HOV lane ends (becomes a regular lane) just before the split between the QEW and 403, and all the traffic that’s been in the HOV lane now tries to weave through to the two right hand lanes to make the 403, all while other traffic is trying to sort itself into the correct lanes for where they’re going, including a lot of traffic coming from on on-ramp at the same spot.
I can’t believe this is something that any competent traffic engineer would come up. Only done at the behest of our politicians and civil servants who know best for us, and how to engineer our behaviour.