You certainly realize that actual traffic management is based on these silly artificial constructs like “following distance”.
Of course, nobody adheres to following distance, that’s why cars run into the back of each other all the time on highways, which is why we have random 15-mile backups.
Well that, and the odd but predictable foibles of the typical driver, like you’ll get a 1-mile backup on your side of the highway if there is a visible accident on the other side. And that traffic will slow down an average of 10 mph if you put barriers up on the left shoulder — because people get scared.
The point is that driving faster in the real world does not always lead to getting more cars through each our.
And yes, there is clearly a flaw in HOV which is that it just doesn’t always influence people. But IF it could, adding an HOV lane would be like adding 2 regular lanes, as forcing people to double-up eliminates one lane of cars. (and yes, practically now those people were driving 2 to a car anyway, it’s families, etc).
Virginia did a hilarious thing, letting hybrid cars get special plates and drive solo in the lanes. Proving that it wasn’t about moving more people, it was about some bizarre notion of “saving energy”. Eventually they grandfathered the program because too many people took advantage of it, buying hybrids and paying the extra fee simply to get to use those fast lanes.
We now have HOT lanes, where you can pay extra money to a private company that maintains special lanes. I hated that they took HOV lanes for it, because we paid for them. On the other hand, you can pay $10 and get somewhere quicker.
Not enough people want to pay the extra taxes needed to build roads. Well, especially since our elected officials want to steal that money and use it for useless public transportation modes.
Thanks for the response Charles.
You couldn’t have done a better job of defending the defenseless.
What I think was even more transparent, was that if you wanted to pay a fee, it was okay to drive in the HOV lane.
This whole thing is a great big sham.
You also touched on nobody wanting to pay more.
We have 2.5 to 3 times more cars that we had in the 1980s, and they are mostly running on gas still.
They are raking in hundreds of millions continually, and can't finance roads. You explained why too. They spend it on pet projects. None of those projects will pay for themselves.