Carpool lanes are for the elite. You always could drive free in them if you had a driver. Tolling them was just a way to attempt to offset some load rather than expand lanes and given the complete mayhem new ones in my area of CA cause I doubt they’ll stay as they are for long.
Here, they are apparently load based, but if there is an accident or people are trying to go in and out of them outside of the sensors they load up and you end up paying your highest tolls while crawling or at a standstill. The most recently added, on I-680 and I-580 in the east bay have dashed lines delimiting them, so it’s “legal” to cross over and people appear to have clued into this quickly and crush the toll lane flow trying to exit during increasing traffic to avoid the photo sensor.
A couple weeks back I was cited for being in one before it’s 8:00 PM end time (my clock said 8, citation said it was 7:58:41) and I replied to it that I would need the photograph, timing instrumentation make and calibration information, and a copy of the contract documents granting whomever the power to assess fines. The response was “As a courtesy, we’ve voided this citation.”
Instead, this is surcharge based upon fluctuations in who shows up at that particular moment, something you can do nothing about. But the highway operator knows that such fluctuations, such congestion will occur and with some frequency and so can take the surcharge to the bank as windfall while portraying it as a "market incentive."
Anyone else doing this would be taken to the cleaners by a lot of big law firms for deceptive business practices.
.............you end up paying your highest tolls while crawling or at a standstill.
Correct. Which seems a little messed up.