The highways connecting Toronto to several satellite cities are some of the world’s busiest. Crowded for twenty hours every day. Often under construction.
Some of this construction was to build “carpool lanes” for vehicles with two or more people. There were many columns on this topic here twenty years ago, with Dopers noting this was often used as a high speed lane, doubting their efficiency or wondering what qualifies as multiple occupants.
Ontario has been aggressively adding carpool lanes to these crowded highways. I have driven them when traffic was moving well, moving slowly and barely moving. Canadians tend to be law abiding; most are not jerks. The carpool lane mostly sat empty while the other two or three lanes (depending on construction) were crowded with traffic moving, or not so much.
Still, I would say maybe a third of the vehicles looked on very casual glance to have only a single occupant. This is not legal, but the police generally have better things to do. Crowded conditions otherwise regulate even most of those who would want to excessively speed.
I can certainly understand the environmental and social reasons to encouraging carpooling. But given how little the lane was used, at least when most drivers were presumably going to or from work, I question the efficiency of building carpool lanes. It might be simplistic to say that extra lane would spread traffic out and increase speed by reducing bottlenecks. But it would. I would guess only 2% of the cars on the highway were using the carpool lane.
If people are using the highway to get to work, their home is some distance from their workplace. Their partner and work colleagues likely work elsewhere. So carpooling to work is not that practical. Of course, there are exceptions. But enough to justify a whole lane? I think the idea wrong headed, even if “trying to do the right thing”. At least they stopped allowing trucks in the leftmost lane, which made driving long distances dramatically easier (for non-commercial vehicles).
I get that, but still think another lane would be better if few actually use the carpool lane in practice. Even making it a carpool lane only at particularly vexatious times (7-9 am, 3-7pm) might be better IMO. Are other carpool lanes elsewhere better utilized?
A newer and more effective approach is dynamic toll lanes, where the cost goes up as the traffic density increases. Turns out I could have used my Ohio EZ-Pass on Charlotte’s Quick Pass lanes 2 days ago if I had wished (the signage didn’t say that, but the signs in Georgia a week earlier did, but I didn’t avail myself of them since the traffic wasn’t as bad as it was in NC).
Ontario added one automated toll highway which goes through and around Northern Toronto and its exurbs. This bypasses (but still allows access to) many of the busiest spots. But instead of using it as a revenue source, a previous Ontario government let a private foreign company build it and keep the fees.
Not a smart move; in any case it is usually pretty empty, since the fees are substantial. The general incompetence around this might have made further toll highways or surge pricing politically impossible in the province.
Around here (San Francisco Bay Area), carpool lanes are very well used.
There’s an important point that is often missed when carpool lanes are discussed. The purpose of a transportation system is to transport people (or cargo). Not automobiles. We use automobiles as a means to transport people, but they aren’t the main purpose.
So if a carpool lane has only half the traffic of a regular lane, it is still carrying the same number of people as a regular lane, and that’s the important number. If a carpool lane has 2/3 the traffic of a regular lane, very common in rush hour around here, it is carrying many more people than a regular lane.
According to Statistics Canada, 11.6% of commuters in Toronto carpool. This was based on data collected in 2016. I haven’t been able to find more recent data, and things may have changed due to Covid. But if that number is still valid, close to 6% of the cars should be using the carpool lane, assuming most carpools are carrying only 2 people. Of course, more people per car means fewer cars carrying the same number of people.
In California electric cars only get them for four calendar years. A different color sticker is issued each year. The program ends September 2025 though and single occupant EVs don’t get the advantage.
I mean, sure, that’s not good, but 2% is a number you pulled out of your butt. Free-flowing travel lanes have very nearly the same capacity as congested lanes, roughly 2,000 vehicles per hour. That’s because faster moving traffic needs bigger gaps between vehicles. This makes free-flowing lanes look more empty because in fact they are. An uncongested carpool lane only needs seven or eight four-occupant vehicles per minute to match the people-carrying capacity of a fully congested lane of single-occupancy vehicles. The former looks nearly empty compared to the latter, with just one car going by every eight seconds or so.
The only time I was in a carpool, it was managed by a county agency. I didn’t have to find people to carpool with, I was added to an existing carpool. We travelled from Sacramento to Stockton. We met in an arranged park-and-ride lot, so that there was no worry about the 3 to 4 cars that didn’t make the trip, and so that we didn’t have to collect people on the Sacramento end. We did collect and drop off people at their employment locations in Stockton.
As incentive, we were all given certificates for use at Enterprise car rental, in case there was an emergency need to go home during the work day. I can’t imagine things going as well as they did without all that forward planning.
I can feel your pain. 25 years ago or so I was working in North Jersey and had to drive I-287 for part of my long commute. The highway had been under construction for many years, frustrating commuters. But what was the cherry on top was when they finished the construction…and put up the “Carpool Lane” signs!
With that said, in traffic engineering we often hear about how adding capacity is a bit of a paradox in that it actually worsens the commute because more people see the extra capacity and decide to make that commute.
I have no way to back this up though. I do suspect that if you simply opened the carpool lane, it might have some of that “extra capacity slows things down” effect.
To be honest, I didn’t realize green vehicles with a single driver could use the lane. This will make a difference.
Although 2% is an estimate, for my recent five hours of driving, it was on the high side. Literally the two or three non-carpool lanes were solidly packed and one car would go through the carpool lane every three or four minutes, at most. However, since some of the lanes are new, maybe non-locals are not fully informed about them. I wasn’t.
There’d have to be something else going on for that to happen. Average vehicle occupancy in North America is generally around 1.3. If the maximum occupancy was 2, then one out of every three or four vehicles would be able to use the HOV lane.
In California at least, carpool lanes are only valid during the morning and evening commute. Outside of those hours and all day on weekends, it’s a regular lane. What is the average occupancy during rush hour?
Virginia State Police has been known to position cruisers and officers at carpool ramps to catch the scofflaws; I’ve seen them here. ISTR reading about scofflaws also being captured on video.
Chicagoland does not have any carpool lanes because, like all the other traffic laws, that law would be broken with impunity and with no consequences. Cheaters would be rewarded by having a lane that would literally be all their own, and law abiding people punished because they would have access to one less lane.