If there is one thing that can be said about Liberalism, it promotes some of the most useless and counterproductive contrivances imaginable, many of which become so institutionalized as to even become household words. They don’t have to work. In fact, they can do anything but work. But, so what? They become part of our life and we accept them without question.
How did the High Occupancy come about and why? The stated and accepted reason is to encourage the reduction of car traffic on congested urban expressways by encouraging drivers to pool their driving. In other words, if two people are going to the same location, why take two cars when both can ride together? One less car, less gasoline used and for the benefit of the Greenies, less pollution. That makes sense and no one has cause to dispute the basis for that logic. The reward for such behavior is to be allowed access to a special highway lane restricted to only multiple occupancy cars. While you are driving in a sparsely occupied traffic lane, your single occupancy cars are stuck in bumper to bumper highly congested lanes. They’re often setting still while you and your passenger (or passengers) are buzzing along at a nice, highway speed well on your way to your destination.
That sounds nice but what is the reality of the impact and practical outcome from the use of the HOV lanes? Do they really serve to relieve traffic congestion and all that such traffic congestion entails? Of course not, but just like every other invention of Liberalism, it is the impression of doing something good that really counts. Whether anything really good is ever accomplished is not the point. Like the old gift giving adage “it’s the thought that counts.”
Let’s look at the problem from two perspectives. One, the addition of dedicated HOV lanes always leads to a reduction in traffic flow which in the end makes the problem the HOV lane was supposed to relieve all the worse. It’s the simple garden water hose affect. If you want to have a certain flow of water pass, you’re going to have to have a hose with a large enough diameter to allow it to pass. In a traffic environment, there will be, regardless of traffic conditions, a certain number of cars trying to get from Point A to Point B. No matter how traffic is allowed to flow, that volume of traffic is still going to be present. Slow it down by reducing the number of traffic lanes available and the same volume of traffic is going to be present.
It is a matter of how long is it going to take for that traffic to pass. The greater the restriction on the flow of traffic the longer it will take that traffic to reach its destination. Reducing the number of available lanes is not going to reduce traffic by one car. It will simply mean that more cars will be present in the traffic flow longer. The quicker we can dissipate the volume of traffic, the sooner those cars will be on the road.
This is simplifying it a little but think about this. Let’s look at just one of those cars applying a little common sense. If the distance a car must travel to reach its destination is thirty miles, if that car can travel at a rate of 60 mph, in thirty minutes that car is at its destination and the engine turned off. Increase traffic congestion so that the speed of that car is reduced to 30 mph what would have been a thirty minute trip is now an hour. That’s twice as long. For the benefit of those who are worried about the affect of the emissions from that car on the planet, it would make sense to want the drive time to be reduced as much as possible. The shorter the drive time the less “polluting” time. Of course that would make sense if the argument had anything at all to do with the reduction in vehicle emissions.
Give me five traffic lanes all going in one direction and spread the traffic across those five lanes and compare the congestion to the same highway with three traffic lanes. Let’s take one of the five lanes and turn it into a HOV lane. Now what do we have? Not five traffic lanes with the traffic spread across them. We have now reduced the number of available lanes to four, with one additional lane with a greatly restricted access resulting in significantly lighter flow on that lane and heavy flow on the remaining four lanes. Ok it will be argued that the newly added HOV lane is in addition to the existing five lanes. That means we now have six lanes? No. We have five lanes for traffic flow to be spread across with a trickle flowing on the sixth lane. Ok, there is some relief there. Some but not much. If we really want to reduce the congestion, we will take that sixth new lane and open it full to all traffic so that the division of traffic is equally divided across all six lanes. Now we really will see a reduction in traffic. The fact is, and the point I am trying to make but may not be making it well, is that the addition of a dedicated HOV lane has very little impact on the flow of traffic in the remaining non-HOV lanes.
For those wanting to counter the logic of this argument, I did not apply the results of scientific analysis to it. I don’t think anyone would be interested in reading a bunch of pages of statistics, charts and graphs and formulas all for the purpose of presenting what can be arrived at by simple common sense and logic. Go back to the garden water hose analogy if you have to. Fill your 15,000 gallon swimming pool with a common 3/4 garden hose. Or, fill it with a 2 inch fire hose. Which will get the job done quicker?
Not long ago my wife and I had to run an errand which took us on one of the Dallas area expressways which has a HOV lane. She commented that since there were two of us in the car, we would be able to use the HOV lane and save some time avoiding the heavy traffic in the regular lanes. Sure, that’s what we did. Let’s consider the irony of the situation though. We could have, when making plans for the trip elected to take two separate cars. She would drive one and I would drive one. Now mark it that we were going to the same destination and going at the same time. We could still have driven separately. Of course if we had, we would not have been able to use the HOV lane. We in individually occupied cars would have been excluded from the HOV lanes and we would have had to suffer the same traffic congestion as all of the other single occupancy car drivers. Because we were going to the same place, and would be going and coming at the same time, it made sense for us to take advantage of the fact that we would be able to make better time on the HOV lane. We would in essence be rewarded for not taking two cars.
The whole premise is absurd. Did we decide to take one car instead of two because of the availability of the HOV lane? Of course not. We would have taken only one car regardless of the traffic lane configuration. Did the HOV lane availability eliminate one additional car from the road that day? Of course not. The purpose of these lanes is to encourage the reduction in the number of cars on the road by offering drivers who will “double up” a reward for saving fuel and emissions. So how much fuel and emissions did we save that day? Absolutely none. The only way we could have saved any fuel or emissions would have been had we made a choice between taking one car or two cars and settled on taking only one. We made no such choice. Under what conditions would we have taken two cars for this trip? None, so there was no choice.
The same thing applies to probably 99% of all drivers on the road. If someone were to make a survey, probably 98% of the cars using the HOV lane occupied by a male and a female are married couples who would have had any reason to consider the choice between one vehicle or two for the trip. Same thing with families. The other 2%? Perhaps we don’t want to know their relationship in the interest of discretion. 
The original intent of HOV lanes was to encourage employees who perhaps worked together or were able to make arrangements to pool their commute arrangements and ride together. A worthwhile idea but one which is hardly possible to implement in all but a few circumstances. So how many cars does employee car pooling remove from the expressways during rush hour traffic time? I don’t have any numbers but I suspect that it’s a rather small amount. If anyone can provide a real statistic, I’ll post it.
Likewise, how many of us will canvas the neighborhood with “I’m going downtown this morning. Anyone else need to go? If so, let me know when you’ll be ready and we can combine the trip so we can take only one car.” If we can combine the trip we can use the HOV lane as a reward for not driving single. How often does this happen? Of course. It never happens. So who does use the HOV lanes? In addition to the couples I talked about already? People who are going to be traveling together anyway. Regardless of the availability of an HOV lane. In other words, no one is combining their driving schedules in order to take advantage of the availability of HOV lane usage. Think that “nobody” is a rash claim? Give me figures which prove that HOV lanes actually reduce the number of cars on the road.
And in spite of the facts, we continue to support and even defend these sacred cows of Liberalism.
Dan W. Dooley
