In the east coast cities where I have lived, the carpool lanes are bassically normal lanes with minimum passenger requirements. You can enter or leave the lane at will.
Here in Los Angeles, some nimrod decided to separate the lanes with double yellow lines, only occasionally allowing you in or out of the lanes. Which means you frequently end up behind some idiot in a minivan full of kids doing 5 mph under the speed limit while the cars in the other lanes are actually moving with no problems (hey, it happens even in LA!).
Sometimes you can pass when the lanes open up, other times you simply can’t because the brief window of opportunity doesn’t work with all the cars passing you on the right.
Your only options are to eat minivan exhaust, or cross a double yellow line. Which I always assumed was illegal.
But a friend recently told me the cops write those tickets knowing full well it is perfectly legal to cross the lines once, then you can’t cross again until the lanes open up again. But that most folks don’t know this so they don’t bother fighting the ticket.
I can’t find any of this info on the DMV website, wanted to see if anyone here happened to know what the deal is.
Your friend is 100% wrong. A double-yellow line means do not cross either into or out of the carpool lane, always (well unless there is an accident and you need to merge around the accident, of course).
I don’t find the “one backed-up carpool lane” problem to be too bad, since most of the CP lanes I’ve seen have exits every few miles – just wait for the next one and get out to dodge the slow-moving minivan. The only exception to this is the carpool land for the 10 freeway in Southern California between downtown Los Angeles and El Monte; that one has no exits between the ends, except for a bridge overpass at Del Mar Blvd. (exit for the eastbound, entrance for the westbound). :mad:
people who think that access to the carpool lane gives you a license to speed
the lanes can be entered and exited at will
The idea is that there is limited ingress and egress to them so that people can drive faster. If people kept shifting back and forth, you’d have a huge traffic hazard.
The double set of double yellow lines are not painted on in an advisory capacity. You can only cross over them in case of an emergency or to get around a stalled car.
That’s because that was supposed to carry only buses and cars with at least three passengers. You were just supposed to get on in El Monte and get off at Union Station.
The laws were amended at first to reduce the number of passengers required to 2, but that created a massive traffic jam, so a compromise was struck that required rush hour commuters to have 3 people in the car and commuters at other times to just have 2.
Not to start a brawl here but the reverse is true from my point of view. If you’re going to go the same speed as the other lanes, why bother getting into the carpool lane? Now if the other lanes are stalled, that’s a different story, but the far left lane is generally for faster travel, which is where the carpool lanes are.
But, before I hijack this any further, it seems my question has been answered. Perhaps not in the manner I had hoped for, but alas, truth doesn’t always favor our whims. Sigh.
The trouble, of course, is that the right lanes might temporarily go faster (in which case, why aren’t you driving in them??), but they will eventually crawl, in which case, the van doing the legal speed limit will be passing everyone up and then again some.
Oh, they have the same set up in Washington, D.C. area; even worse, some of the commuter lanes are limited access with their own on and off ramps and concrete WALLS keeping you in. Of course, those usually have two lanes which switch direction with the direction of the commute.
Oh, yeah. That one’s a bitch. That’s why I never use the carpool lane if I can help it. The far left lane usually moves fast enough to satisfy my need for speed, and it gives me room to maneuver if I need to. Even driving a vanload of debaters, I stay clear of the Diamonds.
but the reverse is true from my point of view. If you’re going to go the same speed as the other lanes, why bother getting into the carpool lane? Now if the other lanes are stalled, that’s a different story, but the far left lane is generally for faster travel, which is where the carpool lanes are.