In his latest NY Times column, John Tierney [who looks like a sickly Regis] talks about hybrid cars and how they lead to more pollution. In VA and now, CA, some [not all] hybrid cars are allowed to be in the carpool/HOV lanes without having the requisite three or more total occupants. This was supposed to be an incentive for people to purchase these green cars. Tierney argues that there are now too many hybrids in the HOV lanes.
As traffic slows down, there will be more idling cars burning more gas and emitting more pollution, but politicians will be reluctant to offend hybrid owners by revoking their privilege. So it will be harder than ever to make the one change proven to speed up traffic and help the environment: convert the car pool lanes into what engineers call high-occupancy toll lanes.
These HOT lanes would be free for the truly virtuous commuters - those in car pools, jitneys and buses - and available to anyone else for a toll that would vary with demand. By enticing just enough drivers to maintain a steady flow of high-speed traffic, the HOT lanes could handle many more vehicles per hour than today's car pool lanes, which are usually either too empty or too congested to accommodate the optimum number.
With HOT lanes, everyone would come out ahead, drivers as well as environmentalists. As more drivers paid for a guaranteed speedy commute in the left lane, they would leave the regular lanes less clogged, so there would be fewer cars stuck in traffic jams, wasting gas and spewing fumes.
So, richer people driving their more expensive cars, not necessarily gas guzzlers, could just hop on over to the HOT lane and be "truly virtuous" by paying more money. Riight.
I remember reading somewhere that London either has already done something like this or is going to do so. NYC was thinking of doing this as well to cut down on the amount of cars on the roads. A 'rush hour' fee or something. But that was quashed when questions of tollbooths came up.
Where would the tolls be collected for Tierney's solution? When I had a car, I had EZPass. I loved the high speed lane by the GW Bridge in NY. But the lane[s] were only freely flowing at odd hours when there were generally less cars on the road or only in the 100 or so meters leading up to the actual booth, why? Because of all the people without EZPass clogging up the lanes not getting out of the way soon enough and basically, backing everything up even more.
The toll booths, wherever they were placed, would beget only more traffic for one reason or another. When an infrastructure is in place to not impede the normal flow of traffic and enable a cleaner/clearer path for those who wish to pay a premium for HOT lanes, I'll be more for it, but for now, this piece comes off as being more pro-classist and and anti-hybrid buyers.
And I'd also like to restate how the tax rebates for purchasing hybrids dwindles each year and I believe they shrink to zero in the next year or two while it remains easy to write off a 12/15 mpg Hummer for the "business purposes" of hauling one's ass to and fro their office to transport one's briefcase.
