I live in a suburb of Los Angeles where carpool lanes are very abundant. I don’t know how numerous they are in other states, so this thread will be addressed as it applies to Southern California.
This is something that has bothered me for quite some time. Basically, I’m wondering… Are carpool lanes really necessary?
My main gripe is this. Carpool lanes benefit the minority of drivers, rather than the majority. So essentially, a whole lane is taken away so only a few can use it. Meanwhile, the majority are confined in traffic.
Most of the freeways here have 4 or 5 lanes in each direction, and they are still congested. Take away one of those lanes, and the congestion becomes even worse. I realize that the whole concept of the carpool lane is to ease congestion (and also pollution) by rewarding those who carpool, but I mean, let’s face it, that’s just not enough people to designate a whole lane for.
On some parts of the freeways here, carpool lanes have been eliminated, and the congestion literally went away over night.
When the whole notion of a carpool lane was thought up, the idea was that it would benefit those who commute to and from work via a freeway. Meaning, you and a coworker could take turns driving. You’d pick up your coworker one day, then go to work together, and your coworker would pick you up the other day, then go to work. Many workplaces support this idea and call it a Rideshare Program. Some even pay you for it and/or give you a closer parking space to the entrance.
But I really think that most people who use the carpool lane only use it out of convenience. That is, because they just happen to have a second or third person with them, not because it was planned. Hell, I do it all the time. I’ve never once deliberately taken someone along with me just so I can use the carpool lane. It’s just something that I never think of. “Oh wait, I better take Jason along so I can use the carpool lane.” Right…
So I leave it up to you. What does everyone else think of them?
(maybe this will satisfy those over in the pit who are concerned about quality threads… hey, I try.)
I love carpool lanes, and I will oppose any effort to reduce them. I think they should be increased.
This is a tautology, a self-proving argument. Carpool lanes are in place to encourage people to share cars, to reduce the number of vehicles on the road, to reduce traffic. But your argument is that people aren’t using them, so the lane is empty and the other lanes are full, so we should eliminate them. Um, what?
By the same logic: We have a law against murder. It isn’t working, because people are still killing people. So let’s get rid of the laws against murder.
The simple fact is that people, in the aggregate, are (1) stupid and (2) selfish. It takes a very long time to change ideas and behavior. Just look at civil rights legislation: Every intelligent, progressive adult believes in the equality of the races. However, we still, still, have pockets of people for whom this is a challenging concept. Carpool lanes are far newer. Does anyone really think they were supposed to be an overnight fix?
The real solution is this: Leave the carpool lanes in place. Eventually, the stupid and selfish majority will get it through their thick brains that, “Hey, duh, that other lane is empty, because, duhhrrr, the people in it are sharing cars. Ehhrrm, I could go faster, duuuhh, if I like shared a car.” And twenty years down the road, when social mores have shifted, we can add a second carpool lane. Why is this so hard to grasp?
Actually, I shouldn’t be surprised. One of the things that has always burned my gut about modern life is the expectation of speed. We can microwave our Hot Pockets in two minutes, we can flip to the comedy channel and get laughs within seconds from one of the ubiquitous stand-up shows, we have the latest game scores at our fingertips on our Internet-enabled pager. And yet, anytime anybody attempts any sort of reform-minded social engineering, we assume the effort has failed if we don’t have results within a couple of weeks.
Come on, people! Long term thinking! It really is possible if you put some effort into it. Jeez.
I call bullshit. “Some freeways” is anecdotal. What about all the others? Efforts are underway by throwback forces to reduce carpool lanes in many parts of the country. The effects should be easily seen; “some freeways” just don’t cut it.
I know, because I’m up here in Seattle, where traffic is escalating dramatically. Ten years ago, rush hour was from seven to nine in the morning, and then from four to six in the afternoon, and that was just on the main lines. Now, you’re as likely to get stuck in bumper-to-bumper on a secondary freeway at nine in the morning on a Sunday as anywhere else. It’s insane. And if you look around at everybody, the vast majority are single drivers.
It doesn’t make logical sense: A car is huge, compared to the single human it’s ferrying around. A motorcycle (dangerous as it might be) is far better suited to a single occupant. If you’ve got four seats in your car, why not have four people in them? It really maximizes use of the car, the road, gasoline, and so on. What part of this is so difficult to understand?
Yeah, yeah, I know, us Uh-murr-kins are wedded to our vehicles. We need to preserve the illusion of our independence and self-reliance, the remnants of our outdated frontier mentality, and one of the ways we do this is by insisting on our God-given right to jump in our Suburban and drive somewhere whenever the hell we feel like it. Any attempt to curtain our irresponsible commuting habits feels like an assault on our core liberties, ridiculous as that might be. The consequence of this mentality, needless to say, is the short-sighted attempt to scale back the positive efforts made over the last few years at reducing single-occupant vehicle use.
Look. You’re free to oppose the use of carpool lanes if you want. Just don’t try to cloak yourself in rhetoric about “improving” traffic conditions, because it just doesn’t fly. If you want to eliminate carpool lanes, simply admit that it’s because you’re jealous of the empty lane, and You Want To Drive There. It’s perfectly natural and human. If more of us were so honest about our intentions, we wouldn’t have to waste our time slogging through logical fallacies and deceptive straw men.
If you really want to improve traffic conditions, then more cars, more roads, more of what we’ve been doing since the 1950’s, are the wrong way to go: They demonstrably make things worse. If you’re serious about improving traffic, then the only things that will help will go directly toward eliminating single-occupant drivers on the roads. Whether that’s mass transit (poorly designed public boondoggles like the Miami system notwithstanding) or carpool lanes, that’s the only approach that makes anything resembling a difference.
And don’t get all self-righteous when you don’t see an immediate benefit. Humans are notoriously short-sighted and selfish; resist the urge to fall into that trap. Come on, I know you can.
I live in Northern California (the south San Francisco Bay Area, more popularly known as the Silicon Valley). Our freeways and even some of our expressways have carpool lanes in them. However, unlike the carpool lanes in the Los Angeles area (which are carpool lanes 24 hours a day), most of our South Bay Area carpool lanes are only carpool lanes from 5-9 AM and 3-7 PM Monday through Friday.
I have also seen capool lanes called “High Occupancy Vehicle” (HOV) lanes, in Virginia when I was visiting.
I’ve also seen bumper stickers on local Bay Area cars that advertise KSFO, a conservative AM talk radio station. Some of these KSFO bumper stickers show a diamond outline (the symbol for a carpool lane) with a red circle around it and a red line through it. Apparently, Geoff Metcalf, KSFO’s biggest blowhard, is on a crusade to get rid of carpool lanes.
Personally, I don’t think carpool lanes are nearly as stupid an idea as those damned entrance-ramp traffic meters – those traffic signals at the end of a freeway entrance ramp that only allow 1 car onto the freeway every 2 seconds. I don’t know of any study showing that they’ve decreased congestion, or encouraged drivers to take the surface streets instead. Bleah.
From what the OP said, it is obvious that the people who don’t carpool are responsible for the congestion. I say we make one one person lane and make the rest carpool. Then we’ed see pollution go down REAL fast.
I live in LA (san fernando valley), and I have to deal with those stupid entrance-ramp metering lights all the time. You know what gets me though? They are 2 lanes wide and then merge quickly into one lane and then that lane merges onto the freeway. Why the hell do both lights go green at the exact same time? You end up racing to get in front/behind of the other car before having to merge onto the freeway. Dangerous, methinks. How come they just don’t alternate?
As for carpool lanes, I like them. Down here I think they actually DO help things along… And I agree with Cervaise – Just because it isn’t having an immediate effect doesn’t mean we should trash it.
And also: I have split up people in cars and taken people along with me just to use the carpool lane. It makes a huge difference.
Actually, Even Sven… we’d see a lot of angry people.
The problem here is not that “people, in the aggregate, are (1) stupid and (2) selfish” (as Cervaise so eloquently suggests). Rather, it’s that very often carpooling just isn’t feasible.
I can’t speak for California, but this is especially true in the Philadelphia-NYC corridor (i.e. NJ). The whole area is so built up and so congested that most people who CAN reasonably use mass transit or carpooling already ARE – and the rest of us really, really wish we COULD.
Take me, for example. I live in a Philly suburb and work in North Central NJ. The only ones in my office who could carpool are the ones who live within 15 minutes anyway. The rest of us would love to share rides. We hate driving 10-15 hours a week alone and would enjoy both the company and the passenger seat – it’s just not possible.
Unsurprisingly, most of the HOV lanes in NJ were a disastrous failure because few people were coming from and going to the same places. In fact, very many have to drive an hour or more and find it extraordinarily difficult to coordinate with another commuter.
The lanes that DO work are the bus-only-lanes entering and exiting the city. That’s because you’d have to be insane to want to drive into NYC yourself, and city-workers are all too happy to use mass transit (buses generally run every 5 minutes during rush hour from hundreds of bus stations around the state).
In other words, mass-transit/car-pooling works really well when you have a lot of people coming from and going to the same places (like NJ -> NYC, Main-Line -> Philly, etc). However, it causes huge headaches for those whose homes and offices are scattered all across a very dense area.
Instead of harping on the “stupid, selfish” single drivers, and spending $247 million on HOV lanes, let’s spend that money building up the mass transit infrastructure outside of cities and thus providing better options than:
A) Move to a house near work
B) Get a different job
C) Spend an extra 30 minutes each way driving to pick up the closest available car-pooler whose office is anywhere near yours
D) Wait in the non-HOV traffic
Or everybody could just get a motorcycle. They’re allowed in HOV lanes, and they save on gasoline, oil, rubber, and maintenance costs. Plus, you get to wear all the leather you want.
My Jeep Cherokee gets about 18-19 mpg, combined freeway and city. L.A. freeways are congested, so that drives my mileage down.
My 600cc Yamaha gets 55mpg. Insurance is only $300/year. In California it’s legal to share lanes (i.e., ride between two lanes of traffic). We can use carpool lanes. Motorcycles park free in many places. By using lane-sharing and carpool lanes, I cut up to 30 minutes off of my 43-mile commute each way. Motorcycles are fun. Using them in carpool lanes is safer than lane-sharing.
Keep the carpool lanes. Buy a good, reliable Japanese motorcycle.
“Oh, but what if I want to go shopping?” I wear a backpack. I can get all the groceries I need into it. If it doesn’t fit, I don’t need it that bad. Plus, there’s a small rack on the bike. It’s so small, it looks like a joke. But it’s functional. Just bungee bulky objects to it: that 24-pack of toilet paper, your tent and sleeping bag, a box (like a milk crate) for carrying stuff… All it takes is a little imagination and planning.
“But what if it rains?” What? You’ve never heard of a rain-suit? You’ve never been wet before?
“What if I crash and die?” Hey. What happens if a meteorite lands on your head?
The reason why this is so hard to grasp is because it just isn’t practical here in LA. Everyone lives all over the place, and they find that it is actually an inconvenience to drive 2 hours out of their way to pick someone up to go to work together.
An example would be this.
You have two coworkers who work in downtown LA. One coworker lives in Diamond Bar, which is 30 miles from downtown LA. The other coworker lives in Long Beach, which is 23 miles from downtown LA, and 38 miles from Diamond Bar.
The coworker in Long Beach would have to drive to Diamond Bar, 38 miles, then back to downtown LA, 30 miles. So that coworker has just driven 68 miles to go to work, one way. Here’s the rationale. “Why drive 68 miles when I only need to drive 23?” Sure, the coworkers are going to be driving only every other day, but even then, the amount of miles still out numbers the miles if each coworker drove on their own.
Now, the example I just used makes those two coworkers look very selfish for not wanting to put mileage on their cars, but this is the reality. I do not think this will ever change. Wishful thinking says it will, but I’m siding with my pessimism on this one. Humans are just inherently selfish (which is a whole GD in itself).
Maybe the example I used seems a little extreme as well, regarding the distances. But on the contrary, this is quite common. That’s the problem with LA – People are just too scattered everywhere. Maybe if I lived in Seattle, I would view carpool lanes differently.
Yes, I am jealous of the empty lane. I really want to drive in it. It frustrates me that I’m not allowed to drive in it because I’m by myself. Which is why I would like to see it eliminated. It doesn’t help me, and it doesn’t help the thousands of other commuters who are stuck in traffic with me. Yeah, I realize I can bring someone along with me, and yeah, I’m pretty sure my fellow commuters stuck in traffic also know they can bring someone along with them. But are they going to? No. Are they ever going to? Probably not.
I don’t think the planners behind HOV lanes expect people who live long distances from each other to get together just so they can share a ride and get to ride in a relatively fast-moving line.
However, many companies do have a high number of employees who live in relatively close areas. UCLA has used a fleet of vans for many years to help its employees get to campus where both traffic and parking are enormous problems.
If you work for a small company with a few employees, such plans aren’t workable and you just have to face the consequences of a long commute.
One of the less intelligent ideas in LA was lowering the number of passengers required to ride in the express lanes on the San Bernardino Freeway from 3 to 2. The lanes were designed as exclusive bus lanes (and they are built in such a way that for a stretch the westbound and eastbound lanes are on the “wrong” sides). However, autos were allowed on them after a bus strike. Now that more cars can ride on it, it is actually more congested than the regular lanes and makes buses on it run woefully behind schedule.
I don’t mind the HOV lanes, but what I really detest are drivers who cut in and out of the lanes outside of the legal areas to exit the lanes. HOV lanes are not an optional fast lane for carpoolers.
The thing I hate about carpool lanes is “kidpooling” ( I may have made that term up, or at least ‘roadshow’ thot so). The idea behind carpool lanes is to encourage CARPOOLING, ie two commuters in one car. Kidpooling does not accomplish this. Out here 10 -20% of the HOV cars are kidpooling, not carpooling. Unfair.
Vandal and Shadenwawa, I’m with you bro’s!
I think carpool lanes are a complete waste. I live in southern California’s beautiful San Fernado Valley, which is a vast area. The odds that 2 unrelated people live and work close to each other are pretty high. Most of the people who use carpool lanes are families, who would carpool anyway. (meaning the carpool lane did not inspire the carpooling!) I mean, if a co-worker lived in my area, we would share a ride. But most of my co-workers live in Palmdale, which is far removed from civilization.
At the top of the onramp to the freeway by my apartment, there is a meter. The onramp itself is at a steep incline.
This ensures that I will not be traveling at 55 mph when I enter the traffic. Who plans this stuff? Somebody weird, I bet.
Are you telling me that you made a reasonable effort and could find no one to carpool with? Most people work in one of two places- in the local neighborhood or at a major center where many people work. Very few people live in one obscure place and work in another. Now if you work in the local neighborhood, that is easy…walk, bike, take public transportation or carpool. Surely one of those options is viable.
Now if you work at a major center (i.e. downtown somewhere), it should be easy enough to find one or two people who live in your immediate neighborhood that also work there. Now, you say that you can’t…have you even tried? Try posting a ride board in the lobby of your building. You just cannot expect your carpool people to just walk right up to you and propose things. It might even take a little bit of gasp work. If all else fails, most cities have at least some sort of park-and-ride system that allows you to park your car free in the suburbs and take public transportation in to work.
Guess I dont have much sympathy for commuters. I take public transportation everywhere and have few complaints. Sure, it sometimes takes a bit longer to get places. Considering that most Americans spend four hours a day watching TV, that is hardly a tragety. Trains and buses are also great for long distance travel. No learning new city streets. No late night breakdowns. You can even sleep while you travel! So stop whineing already about gas prices (while in your SUV…alone) and carpool lanes. The bottom line is you are lazy and vehicle-centric. I have no sympathy.
EVENS: I WALK to work, thank you very much*. I drive my car on Official business (no carpooling), and shopping. Why should I be forced to drive slower than some soccermom w/ her brat, using up twice as much gas & giving out twice as much pollution in her SUV*, yakking on her cell, AND driving on a freeway WE paid for?
Who’s car centric now?
*compared to my Saturn, maybe 3X.
Gee sven, didn’t know you were so passionate about the issue.
A few factiods:
The San Fernado Valley is a part of the city of Los Angeles (for now). The city covers 470 or so square miles with close to 4 million people and more than 10 million registered vehicles. We do not have a valid form of public tranportation. ( A subway is currently being built. Should be operational in about 50 years and only a fool would ride it, what with earthquakes and all).
The total staff at my work is about 130. I work the 3rd shift (14 people total on 3rd). The freeway I take home (when I dare) is one of the busiest in the world and I live more than 20 miles away from work. There are 7 freeways running through the valley.
Lets recap.
470 square miles of city (not including the neighboring Ventura county), 4 million people, very spread out, speaking a variety of lanquages. And I work nights. Nobody I work with lives within 30 miles of each other.
When I worked 2nd shift (at this same location), I did carpool out of nessecity. And I can report with confidence that it sucked greatly. IMHO, it’s just not worth it.
The HOV lanes in Northern Virginia/DC work, although it’s frustrating to watch from the slow lanes.
The I-95/395 HOV has a 3-person minimum (or motorcycle or bus). A carpool car can usually travel 60 mph all the way to where the lanes end in DC. The regular lanes (with 3 lanes) average maybe 20 mph (it takes me at least 24 minutes to go 8 miles on I-395). So one 3-person carpool is about 3 times more efficient than three 1-person cars.
Looking at the regular lanes, I see that most cars only have 1 person. IMO, reducing the HOV limit to 2 people wouldn’t hurt its flow nor really help the regular lanes. But it would help those of us who can only come up with one rider.
AWB, you neglected to mention route 66, where we all get our kicks. It’s 100% HOV restricted during rush hour.
I don’t need to use these roads much, but when I do, I take the restriction into account. If I don’t meet the HOV requirement, I schedule my trip into Virginie for another time. Since I am not a commuter, I have that choice.
This is one way the HOV lanes work- they make sure that the only people on I-66 & I-395 during rush hour are either commuters, masochists or the clinically insane.
I live in a Philly suburb and work in North Central NJ. The only ones in my office who could carpool are the ones who live within 15 minutes anyway. The rest of us would love to share rides. We hate driving 10-15 hours a week alone and would enjoy both the company and the passenger seat – it’s just not possible.