Why should ANY of them get an HOV lane pass? (Score 2, Insightful)

After over three years of living in California, the HOV lane policy continues to drive me nuts.

Firstly, why should driving a more fuel efficient car give one the ability to drive in the "high occupancy" vehicle lane? If the intention of this lane is to give incentive for people to carpool, then this makes no sense. Further, the state stopped giving out these passes. It essentially created an elitist class of early adopter Prius/Honda Insight purchasers that get to use this lane. So, if the legislature decided it wanted to change the intended purpose of the HOV lane to also incentivise the purchasing of more fuel efficient cars, it has failed there as well. It seems beyond unfair to me to take publicly funded roads and give such a small percentage of drivers, who bought the right car at the right time, special lane privileges for eight hours a day.

Second of all, I remain unconvinced that HOV lanes actually increase carpooling. People I know who live reasonably close together, and work at the same business, usually do carpool. But the fact is that many people are not geographically close enough, or on similar schedules to co-workers to make carpooling make sense. I suspect that most of the people I see in the HOV lane on the 101 just happened to be making a trip somewhere together, which is much different than carpooling on a daily basis. A related point is that signs currently list a car with "2 or more occupants" as HOV lane acceptable. The rule SHOULD be 2 (or I'd argue 3) or more LICENSED DRIVERS. The many moms I see driving their kids around in the HOV lane are hardly taking a car off the road, now are they? That is unless the driving age has been lowered to 10 without me noticing.

Finally, the real reason this all bugs me, is the endgame: helping the environment. I see two arguments. Referring specifically to giving Priuses, or Leafs, or Volts access to the lane - The owners of all of them still own a car, and are still driving somewhere, just like the rest of us. In many cases, it is better for the environment to keep the car we have rather than purchase a new one. Last I read, a large portion of the environmental impact of a car lies just in its manufacture. My second argument is from obervation. I've seen many instances on a four lane highway, with the fourth lane being the HOV lane, where it was mostly not occupied, meanwhile the other three lanes were moving at a crawl. Wouldn't it be better to open the lane up to all and give the cars a chance to operate in their more efficient highest gear rather than polluting at a bumper to bumper snail's pace?

I really believe that HOV lanes in general are a flawed concept, that unfortunately are around forever, because who wants to be the politician trying to get elected lobbying against them? Talk about fodder for your candidate. You might as well argue we end the war on drugs.