HOV lanes really CAN alleviate congestion

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And they can do it by a simple change in the law. All vehicles with two or more people are required to use the HOV lanes. Violaters will be ticketed.

We could even have new signs..Spot a violater call 1-800-ROADHOG

-- maddjak (maddjak@hotmail.com), February 23, 2000

Answers

As I traveled south on I-5 this past Monday (2/28) during rush hour I noticed the HOV lanes were empty. So why not eliminate them and open them to all motorists? My hats off to Tim,he should consider running for governor and make the politicians become accountable to the people. Until then he shoukld continue to be a pimple on their ass and irritate them (politicians).

-- e clark (clark_ed_69@hotmail.com), March 02, 2000.

Politicians get prickly about HOVs Carpool lane opponents, backers ready to collide By DAVID AMMONS Associated Press OLYMPIA -- It's an odd little side skirmish in the partisan warfare at the Legislature, this question of whether to open up freeway carpool lanes to all traffic.

But for some reason, it manages to get lawmakers' juices flowing. The dispute, which could carry forward to the fall ballot, reflects partisan fault lines that both parties offer to the voters as a symbol of their essential differences.

To Republicans, who talk about wringing maximum use out of every last square foot of pavement and every last dime of highway spending, opening the carpool lanes is part of a larger debate about government efficiency and whether to revisit transportation policies that have a bias toward mass transit.

They see Democrats as guilty of "social engineering" and squandering public resources without fixing traffic congestion. Democrats don't "get" that people love their cars, they say.

To Democrats, the debate over HOVs (high-occupancy vehicle lanes, in transpo-speak) reflects Republicans' desire to backtrack on progress the region is making toward greater reliance on mass transit, including buses, rail, vanpooling, walk-on ferries and ride-sharing in the diamond lanes.

They see Republicans as more interested in cheap fixes and pandering to motor-voters than to joining a bipartisan effort to finance a significant fix. Republicans don't "get" how angry motorists are with traffic gridlock, they say.

Voters may get a clear shot at settling the issue in November.

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The HOV numbers

Over the past two decades, using mostly federal freeway money, Washington has put in 191 miles of carpool lanes, mostly in the Puget Sound corridor. Uncle Sam has kicked in $800 million, but will no longer finance projects that purely expand road capacity.

Another 100 miles of lane statewide are part of the master plan, but the financing is on hold after Initiative 695 eliminated roughly $1 billion in transportation projects for this budget period. The price tag of completing the system is $577 million during the next six years.

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Instant relief?

Republicans, led by Sens. Don Benton of Vancouver and Dino Rossi of Issaquah, are leading the charge to open up the lanes, at least during off-peak hours.

Rossi's idea is to allow all traffic to use the lanes at all times except for rush-hour, weekdays between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. and between 3:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. Other proposals range from 24-hour-a-day open lanes to a foot-in-the-door plan less ambitious than Rossi's.

So far, majority Senate Democrats and House transportation co- chairwomen from both parties have kept the legislation bottled up.

Benton and Rossi refuse to say die. They say they'll try to attach it to every transportation spending bill that comes along in the closing days of the session. If GOP votes are needed for bonds or other legislation, they might have some leverage.

And if they fail, the issue could still live on as a key component of Tim Eyman's Traffic Improvement Initiative, I-711. Among other things, it would open the lanes to all traffic 24 hours a day.

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Arguments for

Proponents of ending exclusive carpool lanes say it would instantly improve traffic congestion without costing a cent. They say it would ease motorists' animosity toward having to pay tax dollars to build lanes they can't use. And they say it would show voters that lawmakers are hearing their demand for more effective and efficient use of state resources before going to the ballot to seek revenue increases in November 2001.

"We have to come up with something other than a hard-and-fast 24-hour restriction," Benton said. "That is indefensible in today's world."

If lawmakers want to dilute the appeal for Eyman's new initiative, they'd better get cracking, he said.

"Getting rid of HOV lanes is an issue of fairness and common sense," Benton said in urging wide open usage. "Since everyone pays for them, it's unfair that most drivers are excluded from using them. This bill would immediately increase capacity on some of our freeways by 50 percent."

He and Rossi say the HOV program is elitist.

"It's advocated mainly by people in Seattle, who live in a different world, with a bus coming by every 10 minutes. Well, we in my district out in the suburbs and the more rural areas are more dependent on our cars.

"This is not a silver bullet, but we should try it. People say we can't breech the sanctity of the diamond lanes. There is something almost spiritual about these lanes for some people. It's spooky. What I say is, 'It's just pavement, folks, and we need to use it to its fullest, every square inch of it.' "

Benton says the opposition has "blinders on to reality."

"There is really a lot of old-school thinking going on, that if you just make it tough on people in cars, they will get out of their cars and ride the bus or the rail," he said. "You know, it hasn't worked in 25 years and people are getting really angry with the politicians.

"People are not going to give up their cars. That should be evident by now."

Proponents say the HOVs are part of a failed system that pumps too much into alternative forms of transportation at the expense of highways.

Rossi says only 3 percent of all Americans commute by mass transit or use carpool lanes, yet 21.5 percent of the total transportation tax dollar goes for these purposes.

"They are a social engineering failure," said Eyman, a Mukilteo small- business owner. "Just look at Washington's traffic today and you know it has failed. We have the third worst traffic in the nation using their strategy. At a certain point, you have to say 'Let's try something different.'

"We need to mandate more spending on road building and opening up the carpool lanes. The only thing you hear from the other side is, 'We need more money.' But there is no way voters will give them a dime before they show they are using existing money wisely."

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Arguments against

Transportation leaders, including Transportation Secretary Sid Morrison and the chairwomen in the House and Senate transportation committees, aren't as outspoken or passionate about the carpool lanes as the insurgents are.

But they say the carpool lanes are here to stay, one important piece of a long-term strategy for meeting the transportation needs of a burgeoning population.

"You can't pave your way out of this," said Senate Transportation Chairwoman Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, using a favorite line of mass-transit adherents.

"The express lanes really make a difference," she said, by keeping single-passenger cars to a manageable number by getting people into ride sharing, vanpools, buses and, someday soon, commuter rail, light rail and maybe even monorail.

"Opening the HOVs would be the wrong thing to do," said House Transportation Co-Chairwoman Maryann Mitchell, R-Federal Way. "We have the data that tells us it is working well. We would be absolutely foolish to abandon this. We have been judicious with where we have built these lanes and they are working."

Morrison and Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington State Transportation Center at the University of Washington, flatly reject proponents' suggestions that opening the lanes would instantly improve traffic.

Opening the lanes during off-peak hours, when presumably traffic is moving smoothly already, would make little difference, and opening them during heaviest traffic would make things worse, they say.

Another problem would be merging newly clogged HOV lanes into the other lanes once the diamond lanes run out, they add.

But worst of all, it would be a backward step, providing an incentive for people to abandon the buses and carpools, they say. If society removes the advantage of a faster commute, people would tend to return to their love affair with the car, they fear.

The state would require federal approval if it did much tinkering with the HOV hours and might have to repay hundreds of millions of dollars the feds shelled out for construction of the dedicated lanes, Morrison said.

Rossi, though, said 15 of the 21 states with carpool lanes allow open use during off-peak hours, and that New Jersey even converted two stretches of HOV to wide-open usage, all without penalty.

Best guess is that no changes will be approved by the Legislature this year, and that voters will face the question, presuming Eyman's initiative qualifies for the ballot.

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-- Mark Stilson (mark842@hotmail.com), March 06, 2000.


I recall carpool lanes in California only being in force during certain hours. I was a litte surprised to see the 24-hour rule when I moved to Washington. I don't think opening them up during the weekday will make much difference. But, I think opening them up during the weekend is quite sensible, as I'm skeptical there is high ridership of buses or vanpools during the weekend.

During the weekday, it may create unintended problems to open up the carpool lanes till 3:30 PM. A more sensible approach would be to open up the lanes from 10 AM - 2 PM, only.

-- Matthew M. Warren (mattinsky@msn.com), March 07, 2000.


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