Uneasy Rhetoric

Hot on the heels of my discussion of inner Sacramento’s seething dislike for High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes (carpool lanes), and following up on my own unwillingness to support hybrids in said HOV lanes, comes this story from the LA Times. The story outlines the growing frustration of conventional motorists with their hybrid driving brethren. It seems that hybrid drivers, obsessed with their gas mileage (I know someone who fits that description), drive too slowly, holding up legitimate carpoolers.

Also, the increasing number of single-occupancy hybrids is beginning to clog up HOV lanes:

“There’s not enough excess capacity to absorb the hybrids,” said James Moore, director of USC’s transportation engineering program. “I think the foreseeable outcome here is that the congestion advantage we traditionally attribute to [carpool] lanes will disappear.”

Aye, there’s the rub. And the problem with HOV lanes in general. HOV lanes have a fairly small benefits curve. Their benefits to congestion actually depend on only a limited number of drivers using the lanes. As the number of vehicles in the carpool lanes increases, the benefits to each individual driver diminish until the carpool lane is as congested as the rest of the freeway. Then, I suppose we could talk about adding more carpool lanes, but that would require either adding more lanes overall or taking away single-occupancy lanes. I’d much rather focus our limited transportation dollars on automobile alternatives.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, if you’re going to have HOV lanes, lets make sure the vehicles using those lanes are really high occupancy. Frankly, I’m not happy with calling two people in car a carpool, but I’m sure I’d be shouted down in any forum. And even getting one car off the road is better than nothing.