I live in Los Angeles, and we have some of the worst traffic in the country. I’ve seen that one reason for carpool lanes is to help traffic congestion, but I don’t understand since it seems traffic could be a lot better if we could all use every lane.
Why do we still use carpool lanes? Wouldn’t it drastically help our traffic to open all lanes?
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In order for the carpool lane to be effective at encouraging multiple people to pile in one car, reducing congestion, pollution, etc, people have to go out of their way and make a decision to pile in one car, for the express purpose of being able to use a carpool lane. And I don’t think that happens as much as some well-meaning people think it does.
In other words, there has to be multiple people who WERE PLANNING TO drive separate cars to the same area, and then DECIDED AFTERWARDS to all go in one car, just to do the carpool lane. The carpool lane would get credit for actually changing something in this case.
But, if 4 people were, for example, all going to go a restaurant together anyway, then they cannot be counted as changing their driving behavior because of the carpool lane. They were going to ride together anyway, the carpool lane meant nothing. Then you have many people driving to work everyday, and they are the only person they know who 1) lives near them, 2) works near them, and 3) wants to carpool with them, which may be pretty rare, so all those people drive alone.
The carpool lane cannot be credited for getting these people to reduce traffic in these situations, even if they use the carpool lane. They didn’t change their behavior, congestion was not affected, and pollution is the same.
I would argue that the number of people who actually change their driving habits and get multiple people in one car for the express purpose of using the carpool lane is probably not very high.
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