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Location: In my cat's house, until she finds a better human servant
372 posts, read 390,427 times
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Sorry, no, this is a bad idea. Having lived in cities with HOV/carpool lanes i’ve seen how this goes regarding people’s willingness (or more accurately unwillingness) to carpool. This will increase traffic, you are removing an already crowded lane, constricting the flow of traffic even further.
The majority of drivers will not suddenly start seeking out coworkers to carpool with - I mention coworkers specifically due to the proposed hours the HOV lanes would be enforced. one big reason is most people don’t have neighbors who work at the same place they do (as well as other reasons). Many people also do not just head home after work, so are you supposed to ride around together until everyone has completed errands, gone to the gym, picked up their kids or maybe gone out on a date? This quickly becomes pretty absurd.
The majority of people who will take advantage of the new, almost empty lane, will mostly be families who technically will count as multiple occupants but in reality aren’t reducing traffic because the kiddos wouldn’t be driving themselves. The other group will be people who don’t follow traffic laws to begin with and an unknown number of people who are so frustrated by even worse traffic that they risk the ticket. There will probably be some people who actually do carpool (in the sense of reducing actual number of cars) but it won’t be nearly enough to offset the current traffic, not to mention the increased traffic load after losing an entire lane.
Oh, and the suggested fine? $350-400. Why aren’t there such heavy fines/enforcement for dangerous behavior such as texting while driving, DUI, other dangerous actions?
I’ll also add this is being proposed for roads such as Unser and Paseo del Norte, it’s not even on a freeway system, which is the case for the HOV lanes in other cities.
Amen. Coming from L.A., I would hate to see that mess repeated here. People don't start carpooling as a result, they just use the lanes when they happen to have two people in the vehicle. And they dart in and out of these lanes, trying to get to their off-ramp at the last second. Futile.
Location: In my cat's house, until she finds a better human servant
372 posts, read 390,427 times
Reputation: 812
Quote:
Originally Posted by nazz
Amen. Coming from L.A., I would hate to see that mess repeated here. People don't start carpooling as a result, they just use the lanes when they happen to have two people in the vehicle. And they dart in and out of these lanes, trying to get to their off-ramp at the last second. Futile.
Yeah, I lived in LA for a long time. Now that they have started to concede HOV lanes aren’t working, their solution is converting them into paid lanes. This is also happening in other cities. I guess that works well for people with lots of money to pay by the mile. Not so much for the majority.
I also find the statement (from the article) that this would be a cheap solution since “it would only be the cost to restripe the road” pretty funny. Are they planning on enforcing those $400 tickets? How many officers will be needed from our already overtaxed police force? Or they don’t plan on fining anyone, the HOV lane will stay as a de facto normal lane with an occasional “gotcha” to an unlucky driver.
I’d need to learn more about this before deciding, but my initial thought is the likely confusion among at least some drivers leading to more accidents and gridlock. Even if most drivers don’t have a problem navigating a reversible route, it only takes a few to create chaos.
The only reversible lanes I have seen personally are on the freeway into/out of Houston, with those somewhat unnerving hurricane warning signs. That is some seriously flat terrain and I am glad they have an evacuation system set up!
Haven't been down that way in a while, but the Eubank gate to Kirtland/Sandia used to have reversible lanes in the past.
HOV lanes are a traffic engineering mistake with a simple basis in physics: As soon as cars slow down, their throughput _increases_. This is why freeways slow down when too many cars get on them. Almost all drivers are alike in that they'll maintain a standard stopping distance in front of them. That might be a car length at 20mph, but about 7 car lengths at 65. In effect, higher speeds make the cars disproportionately take up more space. The counterintuitive effect is that freeway throughput drops when speeds go up. Individuals benefit most when speeds are maximized, but society benefits most when the speeds drop (because then more people can use the road).
So without regard for the effects of extra lane changes, extra onramps and offramps, and incentives to rideshare, bus it, and/or stay home, an HOV lane would have three possible states:
•Under-utilized, where all lanes move smoothly. No need for the HOV here because any lane will get you there fine.
•Undersaturated, where non-HOV lanes are jammed up and slow-moving, but the HOV lane is undersubscribed and able to move cars faster. The productive throughput of the formerly-not-HOV lane is taken away and disproportionately given to the faster "HOV" cars. Four cars able to get there at 30mph now become three cars at 20mph and one car at 35mph. Net loss to society.
•Oversaturated, where everybody's dragging along, at largely the same speed. No need for the HOV here either.
If we want to reckon with traffic, we need to stop treating improvements like a zero-sum game, where buses compete with cars, and if one poor person is convinced to take a privileged bus instead of drive, then it's a win.
This time and effort should be devoted toward better intersections and road coverage. Why don't we plow a northwest passage from Paseo Del Norte up the Calabacillas arroyo straight to Cottonwood and points beyond? We could put interchanges up at Coors & Montano and a few other choke points in the more congested points in town. We could convert more intersections to the limited major/minor like that at Montano and Renaissance.
They'd cost money, sure, but so would HOV's, and instead of taking slices of the pie from Peter to give to Paul, all the while making the pie a little smaller, it'd make a bigger pie for everybody. A properly constructed HOV lane has a separation and limited access, so it's not simply restriping the road. A line of stopped cars inches from a line of cars doing 50mph is a recipe for disaster, even if that's how many places still have it set up.
Though I'm sure some would deny it, the people who think HOV's are a good idea are the same people who thought ART was a good idea, because they use similar shortcomings in logic: throw public money at an unproven solution with obvious flaws, make your mark and force your will, throw up your hands and either deny paternity or place the blame elsewhere.
I wish they would implement truck restrictions in the left lane of I-40 going through ABQ. Everyday there is at least one truck that impedes traffic on my commute.
I wish they would implement truck restrictions in the left lane of I-40 going through ABQ. Everyday there is at least one truck that impedes traffic on my commute.
Ugh, I hate those trucks that camp the left lane... They really should know better, and probably do. I make sure to flash them, and proceed to give them a nice long honk on the horn as I'm forced to go around and pass them.
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