Came across this article on expanding car pool lane access in OC. "Transportation officials are planning to revolutionize Orange County's car-pool lanes, which even could be open to solo drivers during non-peak hours." "The OCTA has received permission from Caltrans to pursue allowing drivers to use the car-pool lanes when the freeways are not jammed. It's a system that's already in place on many Northern California freeways."-OCRegister 2/13/07 http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homep...cle_1577996.php
When are the lanes not jammed? And what are they going to do? If you're in the lane when the clock strikes "HOV" you have to move out immediately?
When I lived in Phoenix, they had times for the HOV lane. Presumably, if the sign said after 6am it was an HOV lane, single drivers would start thinking about changing out a few minutes before. I personally rarely drove in the HOV lane even during off-peak times, because traffic wasn't bad enough to necessitate it. But I can't think of many times out here that would hold true, and wonder what their definition for "peak times" would be.
The HOV lanes are there to "punish" drivers who drive alone, and "reward" drivers who have more than one person in the car in order to force a change in our behavior. So they will simply post times, like they do in Northern California, where the lanes are restricted to those drivers the government feels deserve special treatment.
That's how it works in Norcal. In most places you can only drive in the HOV lane from 6am-10pm then from 3pm-7pm or something close to that since different sections of highway and freeway are managed differently. You still get a large number of people who drive solo in the HOV lane which is fairly irratating but often times it's a yuppie in a big SUV (which I don't want sitting in traffic idling away) or some thig type in a beat up 1980s bucket with 26" rims and driving erratically while bobbin' his head to some Yeah Area rap music.
