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?
In: 406
YouTuber City Nerd recently made a video going into the upsides and downsides of HOV lanes.
Even creating one more lane magically from nothing would at best have a small, short term improvement, and in the long term would probably make traffic worse, not better.
Comparing a general lane to an HOV lane, that lane is probably carrying more people, and may be moving more cars when the general lanes get congested since it remains free flowing longer. Of course if that’s the case it may be making congestion worse elsewhere by letting more cars get there. In short, it’s complicated and depends a lot on context.
Regardless, both an HOV lane and a general purpose lane are vastly inferior use of space than a transit right of way that could move an order of magnitude more people and could put a serious dent in congestion by not only reducing car usage on that exact route, but around it as well.
YouTuber City Nerd recently made a video going into the upsides and downsides of HOV lanes.
Even creating one more lane magically from nothing would at best have a small, short term improvement, and in the long term would probably make traffic worse, not better.
Comparing a general lane to an HOV lane, that lane is probably carrying more people, and may be moving more cars when the general lanes get congested since it remains free flowing longer. Of course if that’s the case it may be making congestion worse elsewhere by letting more cars get there. In short, it’s complicated and depends a lot on context.
Regardless, both an HOV lane and a general purpose lane are vastly inferior use of space than a transit right of way that could move an order of magnitude more people and could put a serious dent in congestion by not only reducing car usage on that exact route, but around it as well.
Some results from actual studies:
> A 2006 report found that METRO’s HOV lanes (consisting of 113 miles at the time) handled almost 118,000 person trips each weekday, by serving about 36,400 multi-occupant vehicle trips. The report found that the HOV lanes had lower average travel times than adjacent corridors and saved the average commuter 12–22 minutes per trip.
https://www.transportation.gov/mission/health/High-Occupancy-Vehicle-Lanes
> Evidence indicates that the carrying capacity on Onewa Road increased in both the
transit lane and the general traffic lane, while the transit lane patronage on buses
dramatically increased, as did the HOVs’ use of the lane. As such, the transit lane
carried 68 percent of all commuters in 27 percent of all vehicles on Onewa Road
(Murray, 2003).
https://www.nzta.govt.nz/assets/projects/ramp-signals/Priority-Lanes.pdf
[This paper](https://www.witpress.com/Secure/elibrary/papers/UT06/UT06019FU1.pdf) has an extended list of successes and problems. Enforcement has historically been one of the bigger problems, but technology is starting to solve that.
Some results from actual studies:
> A 2006 report found that METRO’s HOV lanes (consisting of 113 miles at the time) handled almost 118,000 person trips each weekday, by serving about 36,400 multi-occupant vehicle trips. The report found that the HOV lanes had lower average travel times than adjacent corridors and saved the average commuter 12–22 minutes per trip.
https://www.transportation.gov/mission/health/High-Occupancy-Vehicle-Lanes
> Evidence indicates that the carrying capacity on Onewa Road increased in both the
transit lane and the general traffic lane, while the transit lane patronage on buses
dramatically increased, as did the HOVs’ use of the lane. As such, the transit lane
carried 68 percent of all commuters in 27 percent of all vehicles on Onewa Road
(Murray, 2003).
https://www.nzta.govt.nz/assets/projects/ramp-signals/Priority-Lanes.pdf
[This paper](https://www.witpress.com/Secure/elibrary/papers/UT06/UT06019FU1.pdf) has an extended list of successes and problems. Enforcement has historically been one of the bigger problems, but technology is starting to solve that.
Pretty simple concept. If people are carpooling there are les cars on the road so having a dedicated lane as a reward makes it incentivize.
Pretty simple concept. If people are carpooling there are les cars on the road so having a dedicated lane as a reward makes it incentivize.
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If you take the cars with the highest density of people and let them move the fastest, it increases the throughput of the system.
The goal is to move people, not cars.
If you take the cars with the highest density of people and let them move the fastest, it increases the throughput of the system.
The goal is to move people, not cars.
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