6:01ers
by Judd WileyJune 4th, 2008, 6:07 pm
The following is what happens when you refuse to expand the highways, and instead invest your resources in car pool lanes.
They are the “6:01ers,” commuters who have found their own trick to beating the Washington area’s traffic gridlock.
They lie in wait in strip mall parking lots and park illegally on the side of the road near high-occupancy vehicle ramps, waiting for the clock to strike 6:01 p.m. - when the carpool lanes on Interstate 95/395 open up to all vehicles, not just those with three or more occupants.
If drivers can hit the lanes as soon as they open to all traffic, their reward is a rocket ride from the Pentagon home - without the need to pick up carpoolers or slugs - while other hapless drivers sit in backups. The same phenomenon happens in the morning, just before the lanes open to all traffic at 9 a.m. The waiters can be spotted, often with coffee and cellphone in hand, parked several cars deep on the side of the Franconia-Springfield Parkway near the HOV ramp entrance.
And they can be found near the Pentagon and Columbia Pike in the afternoon, just before 6, when the southbound lanes open …
Some have shortcuts they won’t share with even their closest friends; others wake up at the crack of dawn or wait until after rush hour; some are outright cheaters who take their chances driving in restricted lanes and are prepared to pay the price …
Sitting on the shoulder of the road is dangerous. It’s also illegal: Doing so can lead to a $40 ticket and three points on a driver’s license …
When the Founding Fathers met on July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia to declare independence from Great Britain, is this what they had in mind?
American citizens, so hamstrung by the failures of government, that they’re forced to literally sit by the side of the road every day, risking fines and other penalties, waiting for the car pool lanes to open, so they can get home to their families a few minutes faster?
It’s bad enough that the government refuses to expand highway capacity to keep up with demand. But the carpool lane is its own special brand of stupidity.
According to 2005 Census data, only 12.2% of American drivers carpool to work. Of these carpoolers, 77.3% ride with just one other person, and therefore can only ride in HOV-2 lanes. The other 22.7% of carpoolers, or 2.8% of total drivers, are able to use the HOV-3 lanes.
Why does a very small minority of drivers, between 2.8% and 12.2%, get preferential (and sometimes exclusive) access to the main entry points into Washington, DC?
How is this remotely logical, reasonable, and fair?
Posted in Car Pool Lanes, Highways, Tickets, Traffic Congestion |
It’s an old post but I had some observations:
1. You are aware that encouraging carpooling reduces peak roadway capacity required, right? And that building peak capacity is the most expensive roadway to build?
2. You are aware that the HOV lanes in question were originally intended as “BRT” or bus-only lanes, to provide a public transit alternative to driving? It’s only to use the “extra” bus lane capacity that HOV-3 is allowed. The alternatives are “no one gets anything” (e.g., buses only in the busway), or “free for all”, (e.g., anyone can use the busway and demand would rise to fill capacity, and the buses would be stuck in traffic, discouraging ridership and exacerbating the problem.
3. The real problem is that the HOV restrictions are based on an outdated understanding of the traffic patterns in DC. The restrictions should run until the normal lanes are no longer congested. I don’t travel that corridor, but I expect that if you ran the HOV restrictions until 6:30 or 6:45, there wouldn’t be people waiting for the minute the lanes open, because the regular lanes would be just as fast.
I’m beginning to sour on your site. You offer nothing but snark and criticism, you don’t acknowledge the political realities on the ground (e.g., VA won’t raise any money for transportation, so how do you expect us to spend more on improving the roads or rail), and you seem to have trouble looking past the end of your nose for why things are the way they are. You resort to comparing any form of government intervention in what is most decidedly not a free market as Communism.
This whole blog could be a giant troll to catch reasonable smart growth and transit advocates, but I’m not so sure.