Carpool lanes do not alleviate traffic. They encourage folks to either a) ignore the ‘carpool-only’ signs, or b) get pissed-off at other drivers ignoring the signs.<\/p>\n
I’ve been in California for a few days on a working vacation, and the carpool-only lanes are stupid. Because I’ve been driving by myself to work, I do not have 2 or more people in my car, and therefore am not supposed to be in said lanes, unless it’s *not* between certain hours, which are, of course, exactly when I’m on the road.<\/p>\n
There is a similar phenomenon in Virginia where they have dedicated HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) lanes open northbound for part of the day, southbound for another part, and closed the rest of the time. To use those, you must have at least 3 people in your vehicle (unless you’re in a motorcycle or vehicle that can only hold two people, in which case the 1 or 2 (respectively) is OK. So, for those of us who don’t typically travel with more than ourselves or maybe one other person, those spare lanes are useless.<\/p>\n
That’s right: even when traffic gets slowed down, those lanes are [mostly] barely used. So, instead of actually alleviating traffic, they end up making the drivers stuck ‘where they belong’ pissed-off at those lucky jerks who can use those spare lanes.<\/p>\n
If Virginia were smart, they’d open up those spare lanes to everybody, with the caveat being that there are fewer exits from those extra lanes, so if you are a ‘local’ driver, you should stay out, but if you’re a ‘through’ driver, go ahead and use them.<\/p>\n
And out here between San Francisco and Sunnyvale on the 101: drop the signs. Having one lane utilized at <15% while the others are stopped or barely moving is stupid.<\/p>\n
All that extra lane has done is make traffic worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carpool lanes do not alleviate traffic. They encourage folks to either a) ignore the ‘carpool-only’ signs, or b) get pissed-off at other drivers ignoring the signs. I’ve been in California for a few days on a working vacation, and the carpool-only lanes are stupid. Because I’ve been driving by myself to work, I do not …
Continue reading the inanity of ‘special’ lanes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,23,36],"tags":[],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-insights","category-rant"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}