You Gotta' Love the HOV Lane?

If you're an auto body shop, that is or maybe a foreign country selling us oil.

Have you ever tried to figure out how we all got stuck with HOV lanes? I have. It isn't easy but it appears to be a Federal mandate type of nightmare, courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration (whoever they are), connected somehow to the Federal Department of Transportation and/or the Department of Environmental Control.

Then, in conjunction with various state transportation agencies that monitor them, we end up with our HOV's. In short, the HOV was created by, and appears to be hobbled in - bureaucracy. Wikipedia offers an interesting and more detailed discussion, particularly in their "criticisms" section.

Together with a lot of Federal doublespeak, the Federal Highway Administration website link above, notes that "In accepting Federal funds to acquire right-of-way, to design or construct HOV lanes, agencies agree to manage, operate and maintain the HOV lanes in a safe and efficient manner." Safe and efficient? Hmmm. That's debatable! They take our tax dollars and barter them back to us as the HOV nightmare.

High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, often called Car Pool lanes or Diamond lanes, appear to have been first introduced in California during the 1970's. Original intentions were to reduce highway congestion while saving precious gallons of fuel by rewarding those who would carpool.

It sounded good but if you web search "HOV's" you'll find precious few "good" things said about them - unless said from a governmental or environmental web site. In fact, the highly respected Texas Transportation Institute did a study. According to the newspaper.com they found a 50% increase in injury accidents when HOV's were not at least protected by barrier.

My own HOV nightmare is the one on Long Island's Expressway. Even the efforts of our Suffolk County Executive, Steve Levy, have not yet been able to improve it according to this linked article from Newsday. (You gotta' love Steve. He's a Pol who actually cares about quality of life and stuff like that!)

Now don't get me wrong. The HOV is a "wunnerfull thing" for the limited few who are able to use it. But in order to join the ranks of those select few, you either have to be on a bus, drive a motorcycle (in whatever weather), or spring for a Hybrid, which can be costly.

Oh yeah, you can also car pool. This assumes of course, that you live near someone who works near

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