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This is all such a crackup. I bought a hybrid but I could care less about the carpool lane. People in there generally wish to go faster than my wife and I do, and I don't particularly want to hold them back even if they are speeding.

Then there's the issue of the stickers. I'll be damned if I'm going to paste stickers on all sides of my brand new car just to satisfy the need to confirm my right to access.

Beyond that, I have always thought the carpool lanes were nonsense anyway. Most people never use them unless they have an extra family member in the car. When they're driving to work, they can't use them anyway.

Show me a freeway that wouldn't benefit from an extra lane during rush hour, and I'll show you a freeway that could use a carpool lane.

If most freeways had 25% more lanes, it would ease traffic considerably. Part of the reason why carpool lanes were developed was to cut energy consumption. Now cars sit in bumper to bumper traffic going ten miles per hour, while a perfectly good empty lane exists nearby. How much energy is that saving, tens of thousands of cars crawling along two gallons to the mile?

In order to move traffic, they have frozen it in place. Typical government fix-it scenario...

It's all politics of course, and an attempt to eventually push as many as possible into public mass transportation. Subsidized by our tax dollars of course.

I have observed in my area (the bay area mentioned in this article) the traffic slow from 50-60 MPH to 10-20 MPH when the HOV lanes start their restrictions at 3PM

Dr. Zoo has been awarded the contract to put charging stations every 6.3 miles in the carpool lanes on Hwy 101 in the north bay. Those battery cars can't go very far without a recharge.