Hybrids may get use of car-pool lanes (in CA)

[question everything]

Tuesday, February 1, 2005

Hybrids may get use of car-pool lanes

By: MARK WALKER - Staff Writer
North County Times

Up to 75,000 more cars carrying only a driver could soon be eligible to drive in California highway lanes designated for car poolers and a select group of fuel-efficient vehicles.

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, is expected to introduce legislation today that would expand the list of vehicles that can use those lanes to include hybrid vehicles. Hybrids are more energy efficient than standard autos and operate with a combination of an internal combustion engine and electricity.

Issa and Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, are scheduled to unveil the "Hybrid Vehicle Access Act" during a morning news conference in Washington, D.C.

Despite state authority for hybrids to use the lanes as an incentive for motorists to use such vehicles, U.S. law prohibits them from using the so-called diamond lanes on highways funded with federal dollars. "Diamond" refers to the symbol used to mark the lanes now reserved for motorcycles, vehicles with two or more people and those powered exclusively by natural gas or electricity.

More..

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/02/01/news/state/11105214521.txt

Contact staff writer Mark Walker at [phone] or [e-mail].

[demnan]

1. We have it in Northern VA and it's not a good idea

People in hybrids are clogging up the HOV lanes so now they aren't running very fast anymore. Sort of defeats the purpose of car pool lanes. Ours are HOV-3 but so many people in my town are buying hybrids to avoid picking up people in the slug lines, so it defeats the purpose of having a hybrid.

[joefree1]

4. Here in California we're looking forward to Hybrid Gridlock

An huge increase in Hybrid sales just sounds great to me.

Carpool lanes are already slow here from the jerks cutting in and out of traffic. Worse case scenario we'll have more time to make sure Hummers see our pinkie salute.

[pokercat999]

14. What VA needs

is better public transportation. HOV and Virginia Railway Express are a joke. I would love to see "DC Metro" extended throughout the "metro" area which includes as far south as Fredericksburg in VA.

[tabasco]

2. My car (Toyota Echo) gets better mileage than some hybrids.

Would I be eligible too? I don't think solo drivers should use the HOV lanes.

[Eurobabe]

3. good idea and how's bout banning Hummers from HOV lanes?

[hunter]

5. Darrell Issa, the man who brought us.... ARNOLD!

I can't wait to be stuck in the diamond lane behind some guy in a "hybrid" SUV that gets maybe 12 miles per gallon.

Maybe we should sell "diamond lane" passes to the highest bidders too.

Then we can claim "diamond lanes don't work."

[maxsolomon]

6. hybrids are just less bad

they're not "good" yet.

no HOV breaks.

[TahitiNut]

7. Heaven forbid the Chauffeur Lanes get clogged!

Mommies on their way to shopping might actually leave their youngest kid at home with their older kid! Wives driving their husbands to work (and using gasoline for a round-trip) might get frustrated. Executives might actually hear their drivers swear! Heaven forbid!

Diamond lanes are an abomination. Progressive taxation based on mileage and car cost is the way to go, imho. Ban the semis, moving vans, gravel trucks, and concrete mixers from the fucking expressways and freeways during rush hours! Give those long-haul drivers a much-needed break! (Does anyone have the slightest notion of how badly stop-and-go driving affects mileage for those large trucks? Gads!) Stop screwing people because they don't have drivers!

[hunter]

9. Long-distance daily commutes are an abomination!

Leave the freeways and expressways to busses, ...semis, moving vans, gravel trucks, and concrete mixers.

San Diego and Orange Counties are a mess because too many people think it's perfectly normal to waste two hours a day commuting.

[TahitiNut]

10. That's because it is "perfectly normal"

If people don't want it, they could insist on mass transit. (That'd be something I'd support!) When I lived in the Bay Area, I sometimes drove short commutes, sometimes drove long commutes, and sometimes rode BART. (I preferred BART.) Maybe it's hard to understand, but I couldn't move every fucking time I got a new job! That's a fact of life! Another fact of life is that one's hours aren't under the employee's control. If I told my management that the work had to wait because my carpool was leaving, I'd be looking for yet another fucking job! and another fucking carpool! There's no mystery that carpools aren't common in such areas - residential neighbors are very rarely job neighbors, too.

[hunter]

12. I actually agree with you...

"Progressive taxation based on mileage and car cost is the way to go, imho."

We are in this mess because the true economic and environmental costs of commuting have been hidden from the average commuter. We have been subsidizing the commute.

Who benefits from this subsidy? Not the commuter. In fact the commuter suffers. The benefits of this subsidy all go to the oil companies, the car companies, the companies that build the highways, and the developers who turn rural areas into suburbs.

We can solve this problem now, with ideas such as your suggested tax, or we can let nature solve the problem for us.

Nature's solution will be rather brutal. She will simply delete all the jobs worth commuting to, and all those jobs that depend on cheap oil.

Unless we solve the problem now, life in the suburbs is going to be very uncomfortable.

[TahitiNut]

15. I agree.

I've been long-appalled at the idiocy of the decision-making regarding transportation. Our "public representatives" typically raise the bar for any public mass transit and require "utilization" at the 70-80% level as some economic litmus test. Given that the ordinary SUV has a "utilization" level down around 20-25%, I find this disparity appalling.

Can anyone even begin to comprehend the enormous amounts we've expended in all automobile-related areas in the last 100 years? Roads, garages, parking, cars, gasoline, repair, mining, disposal, etc, etc, etc. I've got to believe it's somewhere on the order of $200 trillion in today's dollars.

There's absolutely no way in Hell that if such a national program were proposed 100 years ago, with that kind of realistic price tag, that anyone would approve it. But that's exactly what we did. In another 100 years, I believe almost 95% of it will be a total, complete, and utter waste ... at an additional cost on the order of $300 trillion in today's dollars.

[question everything]

17. California actually had a great public transportation system

in the 50s, I think. But then the oil and the cars and the tires industries colluded to build roads after roads, to re-educate Californians about cars and then the result was digging out the railways of the trolleys.

Even now, Orange County is trying to get a light rail and everyone objects... for it to go in their back yard. From the time planing started, so many new developments were built that any rail path will be in someone's back yard, or will result in relocation of small businesses.

Many objected to the light rail in Minneapolis, yet its ridership has exceeded all expectations. I think that when planned right, "if you build it" they do come.

We live in a suburb of Minneapolis, but when we landed on New Year's day, after a major sleet storm that left very few taxis available at the airport, we took the light rail directly from the terminal to downtown Minneapolis and there hailed a cab to take us home. And we saved a lot of money in the process, too.

[TahitiNut]

18. Yes, it did.

LA actually had LOTS of streetcars, busses, and even a subway. It's no accident that the cablecar is SF's symbol ... that's public transit. The regional rail system in California was terrific!

[MountainLaurel]

20. Another fact of life

Especially relevant in the VA area mentioned above, is that if you make less than $30K/year and don't want to live with your parents or in a war zone, your only option is to live 20 or 30 miles out. The Washington Post did an article a few weeks ago noting that people such as teachers, police officers, and nonprofit workers have been priced out of more than 80 percent of the Metro area. (Article still might be rattling around the Poverty forum where I posted it.) That leaves them at the edges like West Virginia and Stafford where they have a 2-hour commute into the city.

[4_Legs_Good]

8. Doh! I thought this was already a done deal!

I better stop driving in the carpool lane.

Gah, Issa. The dude should be shot (though I think I like this legislation).

david

[mountebank]

11. HOV lanes have not been shown to increase ride-sharing.

A source I read (put out by UCLA's Institute of the Environment) states that the average person per vehicle has not gone up in 25 years (still at around 1.2 people/vehicle). How many people do you know that carpool specifically because they would have access to carpool lanes? I know zero people that do that, and I live in L.A.

Adding more lanes is, of course, ludicrous. Traffic eases for a little while, until those that were turned off from driving previously decide it's worth it again. Traffic will always fill available lanes to what most (normal) people consider unacceptable.

The only option is taxing for use or ambitious mass transit.

When will a politician step up?

[yellowcanine]

13. You don't have "slug" lines in LA? It is a big thing in the DC area.

People wait near an entrance ramp and drivers stop and pick them up in order to use the HOV lanes. So they definately ARE carpooling specifically to use the HOV lanes.

[mountebank]

16. I could never imagine a Los Angelean doing that.

I think it goes against our whole code of ethics, not to mention paranoia. The HOV lanes are slow anyway - so the benefit wouldn't outweigh the risk of car-jacking.

[question everything]

19. And working with employers

I worked for a company that would have vans taking employees to and from the Metrolink station some few miles away. And it would do this several times a day. Of course, that would necessitate one to just close one's compute at a certain time and say "good evening" and obviously not everyone can do this, but many can and I have known people who, once they gave it a try, marveled at how they could have commuted otherwise.

And you need adequate parking at the train stations from where commuters start.

[Festivito]

21. Hybrids get POORER highway mileage. Why support that?

Hybrids get a mileage boost when used in stop and go traffic. On the highway the extra weight of the recovery system hurts their mileage. It's a great car for daily chores driving.

Giving incentive for hybrids to travel highways seems bass-ackwards.

Perhaps a ratio of car weight or mileage to number of passengers would work better.