Free Republic

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...

RICHMOND (AP) — After years of planning, construction will begin next spring on the new express toll lanes on the Capital Beltway, state transportation officials said yesterday.M The public-private project will cost about $1.7 billion — nearly double the projected cost two years ago — and will be completed in 2013, the Virginia Department of Transportation said. VDOT Commissioner David S. Ekern said the agency has reached an agreement in principle with two private contractors — Transurban DRIVe and Fluor Enterprises — for design, construction, operation and maintenance of the high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes. The project is intended to...

Federal authorities could force Caltrans to kick hybrid vehicles out of congested carpool lanes or require drivers of non-hybrids to pick up an extra passenger to gain admission to overused lanes. And that could help unclog carpool lanes in the Bay Area, most of which have become commute-hour slogs, according to a Caltrans report compiled after more than 50,000 hybrids were given access to the lanes. The report found that carpool lanes on Interstates 80 and 880 and Highways 101, 4, 85 and 237 have gone from being relatively free-flowing routes in spring 2005 to stop-and-go congestion this past spring....

Wouldn't it be nice to have the highway all to yourself? All alone during rush hour, whizzing down Interstate 395 with not a single car or bus to get in your way? Alas, even the leader of the free world doesn't get that kind of treatment. Not that he didn't ask. On Tuesday, the Secret Service asked Virginia officials if they would be kind enough to shut down all of the HOV lanes on I-395 from 1 to 7 p.m. the next day so President Bush could get where he needed to be, according to state officials who spoke on...

When California allowed solo occupants of hybrid cars to use carpool lanes last year, many thought they were merging onto a narrow strip of car culture heaven. But increasingly, hybrid owners say they feel like the victims of road rage. Carpoolers accuse them of driving too slowly in order to maximize their fuel efficiency, and of clogging diamond lanes that were once clear. Hybrid motorists even have a term for the ill will: "Prius backlash." "There's a mentality out there that we're a bunch of liberal hippies or we're trying to make some statement on the environment," said Travis Ruff,...

A report examines nearly five years of travel data and concludes that HOV lanes have increased congestion in San Francisco. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and California State University, East Bay have measured the effect of high occupancy vehicle (HOV) restrictions on 100 miles of freeway in the San Francisco Bay area and found the lanes have had the opposite of their intended effect. Using detectors buried in the pavement, they analyzed four-and-a-half years worth of speed and travel time data from 2001 to 2005. Because the HOV/carpool restrictions only apply for 8-10 hours a day on the...

DENVER (AP) - A makeshift mannequin that failed to fool police monitoring the high-occupancy vehicle lane on a highway has fetched $15,000 US in an auction on EBay, with proceeds going to charity, the buyer announced. A company called Video Professor bought the Styrofoam head, coat hanger and clothing stuffed with newspapers from carpool-lane scofflaw Greg Pringle, 53, said Brian Olson, a spokesman for the company. Olson said the computer tutoring company will take Tillie to various events and later auction her off again for charity in June. As part of his sentence handed down earlier this month, Pringle agreed...

The astounding sense of entitlement of some GTA commuters has left police shaking their heads after a woman was found sneaking onto the high-occupancy lanes with a fake baby in the back. "She looked like the cat who swallowed the canary," OPP Sgt. Cam Woolley said of the woman who was pulled over yesterday. "She told the officer it normally works." STIFF ARMSWoolley said the cop was patrolling the HOV lanes of Hwy. 404 near Sheppard Ave. yesterday when he spotted an Intrepid whizz by and noticed the baby's arms seemed unnaturally stiff. Not being sure, the officer decided to...

A fetus doesn't count as a passenger in the carpool lane, an Arizona judge has ruled. The Phoenix Municipal Court decision doesn't affect drivers in high-occupancy-vehicle lanes around, say, Vancouver or Toronto, but it addresses a thorny question that may have occurred to some. Candace Dickinson, 23, of Ahwatukee Foothills, Ariz., got a ticket for driving alone in an HOV lane on Interstate 10 on Nov. 8. She fought it in court on grounds that she was pregnant at the time, the Arizona Republic reported. Judge Dennis Freeman rejected her argument on Tuesday. For HOV purposes, a person is someone...

The article can't be posted here but here is a link to it: http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/1214ar-pregnant14-ON.html

A pregnant woman ticketed for driving in the carpool lane will have her day in court next month to argue that her unborn child counts as a second person in the car. "I understand the reasoning for the HOV lane," said Candace Dickinson, 23. "But whether my son is in a car seat versus in my stomach, I don’t get it. It’s the same thing." The near-full-term Ahwatukee Foothills woman was driving to work on Interstate 10 near Interstate 17 at 6 a.m. last week when a Phoenix police officer pulled her over. "He asked how many people were in...

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. - Say what you want about police officers, but they are no dummies. The California Highway Patrol gave Kevin Morgan, 28, of Petaluma, a $351 citation for driving in a high occupancy vehicle or "HOV" lane with a kickboxing dummy propped in the passenger seat. The dummy was wearing a Miami Dolphins windbreaker and a baseball cap, but Officer Will Thompson noticed that the "passenger" had no legs. "When I looked inside his window, I thought, 'Oh, that's cute,'" Thompson said. "I didn't even ask him where he got it. I think he was pretty embarrassed because...

LOS ANGELES — Judgment Day has arrived in California, but not exactly as prophesied. The ones sitting on the right-hand side are the sinners. They're stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic while the righteous fly past them in the far left lanes. Those freeway lanes used to be reserved for car pools, but they've just been opened to a new group: those of us virtuous enough to drive the right hybrids. I'm not a good enough person yet to own a hybrid, but I've been passing for one. I rented a Toyota Prius for the pleasure of cruising the car pool lanes...

Owners of hybrid cars in California began applying for $8 decals Thursday that will allow them to drive solo in carpool lanes. But some drivers are going to be disappointed: The state says only three hybrids — the Honda Civic, Honda Insight and Toyota Prius — will be allowed. ADVERTISEMENT That leaves four others on the market, the Honda Accord, Toyota Highlander, Lexus RX 400h and Ford Escape, off the list. Ford, in the midst of a publicity campaign touting its hybrids as a symbol of its environmental commitment, is not happy. "The U.S. Congress determined the formula for hybrid...

ARLINGTON, Va. – Instead of crawling out of bed at 4 a.m. to beat the morning rush, Frank Murphy sleeps late these days. He says he owes it all to his hybrid car – and a law that has some of his fellow commuters upset. Drivers of the environmentally friendly cars are allowed to cruise solo in Virginia's car pool lanes, slicing Murphy's daily two-hour commute in half. And since buying a hybrid 18 months ago, Murphy is leaving his home as much as three hours later. "The quality of life has gone up tremendously," he said. But Murphy's joy...

Under criticism for missing a rare chance to help secure $400 million for a coveted car-pool lane on the 405 Freeway, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped up Wednesday and promised to support the project -- if Van Nuys Rep. Howard Berman can deliver the federal money. Schwarzenegger came through none too soon for Berman, a Democrat, who has been lambasting the governor for failing to commit to the state's 20 percent in matching funds, which are needed to get the project eligible for consideration in the $300 billion federal highway bill now being negotiated on Capitol Hill. "We support your effort...

As Hybrid Cars Multiply, So Do Carpooling Gripes A surge in the number of hybrid vehicles has left carpool lanes nearly as congested as the regular lanes they are intended to relieve, a Virginia transportation task force said yesterday. A detailed study of carpool lanes on Interstate 95 found that the number of hybrids more than tripled between last spring and October. State transportation officials fear that the trend will continue as more hybrids enter the market and more commuters take advantage of the exemption allowing them to ride alone in such vehicles. The findings reflect the sentiments of carpool-lane...

HOV lanes, shown here onInterstate 5 near North 130thStreet, require two or moreoccupants. One driver, one passenger. That's all it takes to drive in almost all of the Seattle area's 205 miles of HOV lanes. Are they too crowded? Should HOV-2 become HOV-3? Last year traffic in five of 14 HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) lanes monitored by University of Washington researchers failed to meet the state Department of Transportation's 11-year-old performance standard. The threshold: an average rush-hour speed of at least 45 mph at least nine weekdays out of 10. Banning two-person car pools is one option the department is...

How good is good enough? That's a question you have plenty of time to ponder when you're sitting in your fossil-fueled automobile, stewing in traffic and watching other cars zoom by in High Occupancy Vehicle lanes. The reason those cars can use the lane is that they are carrying two or three passengers (depending on the highway). Maybe the drivers come from a big family. Or maybe they are among the small group of commuters who actually changed their behavior by carpooling in earnest in order to qualify for the carpool lane. Or maybe, as happens in the Bay Area,...