People, people. You hate carpool lanes? Fine. You think they are an example of a legislative folly? Whatever. We are supposed to be fighting ignorance here.
Are you aware that major cities like LA, Houston and Atlanta are under federal EPA mandates to reduce smog? And you know if they don’t reduce smog, they lose federal highway funds? That’s right, reduce the pollution or hey, deal with the gridlock. There won’t be an extra lane on the highway for HOV or otherwise. There will be no money to build anymore capacity.
How are you going to get people out of their cars? Encourage carpooling and mass transit to cut down on pollution. Here in VA, the HOV lanes are open to hybrid vehicles regardless of how many passengers are in the car. This shows how the HOV lanes, in the legislature’s eyes, are a means to reducing pollution. Stupid legislature indeed.
I take Metro to the Pentagon everyday. You should see the lines of people waiting in the slug lines. Every one of those people represents a car off the highway. When I do drive home, it is absolute gridlock on 395 and the hybrids and carpoolers are zipping by in the HOV lane. If I was going further, I would stop at the slug line to pick up some people to take HOV.
I’m sorry, but I can’t stand it when people say crap like this. A strip of asphalt doesn’t have the ability to be moral or immoral. Say whatever you want about the poeple who plan, build, fund, or drive in them, but leave the poor HOV lanes alone.
Back in my college days I participated in a good old car counting job for the HOV lane on the Long Island Expressway. NYS DOT (region 11 I believe) wanted to test the efficacy of their HOV lanes (essentially to answer the OP’s question). I do not recall numbers, but the HOV lane did carry substantially more passengers than any other lane (say about 50% more, not counting buses, just as a WAG (it was 10 years ago)). This is at a time when all lanes are operating more or less freely. The question of whether or not all of the drivers and passengers would have been driving together were it not for the HOV lane - this part of the job I did not participate in. However, by whatever number did convert to HOV due to the lane, by that much was highway capacity increased.
Now, having occasionally driven the LIE during rush hour, there is only an advantage time/speedwise to using the HOV when there is a substantial amount of traffic - the HOV is limited access and one idiot driving the speed limit slows the whole thing down.
However, once speeds in the other three lanes start falling, while the HOV stays at 55-60, the number of passengers/lane/hour starts to become biased very heavily in the direction of the HOV lane - to the point where I could believe that 50% of the people being carried by the HOV lane.
Still, I guess it is possible that people merely switched lanes if they had multiple people, and as I have never commuted from Long Island to New York City I cannot really make a judgement call on this question. (I did a reverse commute for 6 months which was bad enough).
However, when I lived in Fairfax, Va, and worked in Arlington (heck, call it Washington D.C.) I would either carpool (either with family or coworkers) or use the bus if my dad were working off hours. It was not unusual for carpools missing people to cruise all of the local bus stops seeking the critical additional person to allow the car to use the HOV-3 lanes, which made a big difference in terms of travel time. So I suspect that many carpools were created to exploit the HOV lanes rather than just opportunistically use the fast lanes.
At any rate, the HOV lanes on the LIE are still there after the above mentioned study, so they probably do work.
And not a single cite in sight, just vague dim recollections and anecdotal evidence. Sorry
Exactly what I was referring to in my first post: green legislation and policy (federal and other) translates to fewer people being able to use the freeways. Translates to me sitting in traffic and wasting away my precious life all for their damn ozone. Makes me want to hide my recyclables in the trash just to show 'em.
Man, doesn’t anybody around here do any research anymore?
I am of no opinion on HOV lanes, living as I do in rural upstate New York, where the only traffic jam I’ve ever seen was to cross the US-Canada border. But I got interested in reading this thread, especially as I’m a bit of roadgeek, so I did a bit of snooping around.
I’m not sure that “improving overall roadway efficiency” is a noble goal (though one must admit it has a certain roadgeeky cache to it). The big surveys, though, seem to indicate that HOV lanes do not reduce traffic congestion or improve air quality. I found a bunch of other cites, and the general run of them seem to be running 2-1 against HOVs.
Not the result I expected to find, especially as Bill H. and I seem to lock horns a lot. (Kiddin’ there, ol’ Bill! ) Then again, in my limited experiences with HOVs I always seem to see an empty HOV and several packed main lanes.
If anyone’s interested in reading more about this frankly deadly dull subject, I got the previously-mentioned sites by entering “HOV lanes” “reduce traffic” survey into Copernic.
Anyways, at least here in DC, there are benefits to carpooling. Besides the time benefit, Metro provides rides home via cab if there is an emergency or unscheduled overtime. These rides are free if you carpool or take transit.
Even if the carpool lanes do not decrease congestion (in non carpool lanes) there may be an increase in the roads effective capacity - offsetting the need for either more roads or other transportation options. Your second cite indicates that the methodology of at least some analyses of HOV lanes are flawed by only counting cars and not passengers - the lane may only carry a proportionate number of cars but a higher number of passengers. I guess this would fall into the category of “improving overall roadway efficiency”.
Actually it seems that all three of your cites would tend to support the contention that HOV lanes, at the least, tend to “improve overall roadway efficiency”
As to whether or not “improving overall roadway efficiency” is a worthwhile goal or not I tend to think it is. If growth and population movement creates greater demand for capacity between the burbs and the city I would think that designating a carpool lane is both cheaper and quicker than either expanding the road network physically or improving mass transportation options. Of course, given the tendency noted by a poster above for congestion to remain constant it is at best an interim solution.
Like I’ve said before, the passenger counting does nothing but prove that carpoolers have been segregated into the carpool lane. That does not mean the freeways are more efficient. If carpool lanes were opened up to general traffic, busses and carpools would intermix with general traffic.
HOV lanes only improve overall roadway efficiency if it increases carpooling. Just pointing at the number of cars/people that use the lane does not prove that they are carpooling BECAUSE of the lane.
I make the distinction because every person I know who uses our local HOV lane does not do so because of the HOV lane, but because of the parking situation downtown. If my little sample population is the norm (which here I suspect it is), then if the HOV lane were open to general traffic, carpoolers would still carpool/bus, and the general traffic situation likely would improve. Of course, there’s only one way to find out.
And, as I meant to say, counting carpoolers on a freeway BEFORE and AFTER the conversion of a lane to a carpool lane would be the only way to tell if the conversion of a lane to a carpool lane is actually increasing carpooling. Counting afterwards only confirms that there is a carpool lane and that people are on it and that the vehicles with high occupancy are the ones on it – not if it has improved traffic or efficiency or carpooling rates.
