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Getting Rid of Carpool Lanes Could Double Travel Times (sciencemag.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Eliminating carpool lanes could almost double drivers' traveling times, according to a new study. The findings come thanks to an unusual decision made by the government of Jakarta last year. Following allegations that drugged babies from poor households were being used as "jockeys," or passengers for hire, Indonesian lawmakers repealed the so-called three-in-one restriction. The law had required cars driving on the business district's main roads to carry at least three passengers during rush hours. To determine the impact on the city's drivers, Benjamin Olken, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and colleagues queried Google Maps for real-time driving-speed data before and after the new policy went into effect. Following the policy lift, travel delays, defined as the time it takes to travel 1 kilometer, increased by 46% in the morning and almost 90% in the evening, the team reports today in Science. But the most startling result is that phasing out the three-in-one policy led to worse traffic during times of the day and on roads where there had never been restrictions in place, Olken says. One possible explanation, he says, is that the three-in-one restriction led fewer people to drive into the city. "Maybe they carpooled, took public transit, or worked from home."
In the USA they take away "free" travel lanes, then sell them back to you as carpool/HOV/HOT lanes. This creates scarcity and increases congestion in the existing lanes and makes the relatively quicker toll lanes more appealing, which fills up the government coffers. Sweet little scam.
So it's doubtful that getting rid of toll lanes would increase congestion, rather it would restore highway capacity so traffic should flow better.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
That was just the Mercer Island private lane anyway. The Seattle to Eastside commute volume reversed decades ago. But the DOT never had the guts to reverse the lane to match actual use.
Have gnu, will travel.
Its possible that Braess's Paradox is to blame here also?
In a nutshell, it can be that if people are given too much license to make "selfish' decisions, it can actually increase travel times across the system. (E.g. if people keep changing lanes to get ahead but cause others to slow down resulting in a net negative to the system).
There are examples of this occuring when new "improvements" to motorways added to a system actually caused traffic delays, which only went away when the new road was closed.
The thing is, that was the case. The title misleads people into thinking there was just "another lane" which required 3+ people in the car, it was all of them.
another way is that toll roads exist to force the poor to use slower, crappier modes of transit. Hell, our entire car based society exists for that. We all suffer through wars, air pollution and an overall lower standard of living save for a few so well off they can stand above it. And most of them still spend 90 minutes a day commuting. And even if we ignore all that toll lanes are still a regressive tax, disproportionately hurting lower wage earners for whom the tolls represent a larger percentage of their income.
Oh, and can you at least RTFS? The entire point of the article is that they found getting rid of HOV lanes increased congestion. Even in a system where the majority of folks were abusing the system (Jakarta). I suppose you might have a point about toll lanes, but that's not what anyone was talking about.
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Well, as a dirt poor these last few years motorcyclist who has other dirt poor motorcyclists as friends, I can say categorically that daily commuters on motorcycles in the greater Seattle area do that because its cheaper or gets them to work faster than a car. I work from home just now for a very underfunded startup, but previously I commuted year round (save a few snow days that happen here) by motorcycle. If I had mod points I'd mod you up as humorous. The reason motorcycle use the HOV lanes is justified by their very good gas mileage, safety from fewer vehicles in the lane, and air-cooled motorcycles break down in prolonged stop and go traffic.
Also car drivers need to open their eyes and see motorcyclists. The vast majority of motorcycle accidents are cars hitting a motorcycle. It is as if people would not see a large crib with lights on all the time in the road. Or a pallet of cinder blocks with taillights and headlight(s) on all the time. Car drivers fail to drive defensively. And yes some small number of motorcyclists have apparent death wishes. But not as many as cars driving in and out of traffic at rush hour. I have my little french fry transponder but I'm on my third. heat and 60MPH peel them off the plastic headlight cover. So charging a motorcycle will not go over well with me.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Following allegations that drugged babies from poor households were being used as "jockeys," or passengers for hire
Holy crap, if this is true I would think that congestion traffic is the least of your worries...
While I agree in general it's hard to put the blame solely at drivers inability to "see a pallet of cinderblocks".
Firstly those pallets are much larger than any motorcycle.
Secondly motorcycles fit in blind spots even with properly adjusted mirrors where small cars would not.
From a behavioral side:
I have only once seen a motorbike move with traffic rather than overtake, move faster, or (if the traffic is slow) lanesplit. And that one motorbike was a Harley too big to lanesplit. This is an expectational piece. When I drive I generally keep a view out and know the relative positions of cars around me, but baring a few idiot car drivers (okay a lot of idiot car drivers) motorcyclists are somewhat of a wildcard, they suddenly appear and then disappear soon after.
I can't blame them really, I'd be doing the same thing if I were small enough to fit in between traffic, but in general even the well behaved ones are hard to predict, and the vast majority of accidents involving cars and motorbikes involve merging into them due to the above issues. That is followed not too closely by being rear-ended by them (i.e. cutting them off because they have a far worse stopping ability.)
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The key to success is being that man.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's not just you motorcycle riders who have problems. I had a blue Nissan Leaf that I leased and was using to drive to work. My distance from home to work is just under 22 miles each way and I had an older, gasoline powered car that was not doing well in the stop and go traffic and was not getting good gas mileage either, so I got the Leaf. I liked the Leaf but what I didn't like was having a large number of close calls driving it because people seemed to be unable to see it and would start getting over right into where my car was or would turn right in front of me from the opposite side of the road like I wasn't even there. I talked to a few other Leaf drivers and have heard similar stories. The Leaf is not unusually small, the design isn't strange, and there was nothing about the blue color mine had that was different from blues used by other car manufacturers, but I had a lot of incidents where people seemed completely unable to see the car. I don't have the Leaf any more and while I liked driving it, I admit to feeling a bit safer without it.
People are just pretty bad drivers in general. I am always seeing people make very risky left turns right in front of oncoming traffic rather than wait for a break in traffic where it's safer. In my state improper left turns seem to be the cause of the majority of accidents. By our state law, left turn has to yield to oncoming traffic, but you would really be surprised at how many people seem to think that oncoming traffic has to yield to all left turns.