From: ata@hfsi.uucp (John Ata FSO)
Subject: Re: HOV and why it should be!
Reply-To: ata@hfsi.UUCP (John Ata FSO)
Organization: HFSI, McLean VA.
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 15:27:08 GMT

In article <24822@oasys.dt.navy.mil> mulvihil@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Lawrence Mulvihill) writes:
>
>Let's try crunching some rough numbers.  Let's say you are right
>about traffic flowing freely.  That means that the congested cars
>are getting 20mpg and the freeflying ones are getting 25mpg.  Now
>then, let x be the number of cars with one person in them, and y
>be the number with three people in them.  Then the pollution
>produced with the HOV-3 scheme could be represented by:
>
>x/20mpg + y/25mpg
>
>And the pollution produced without HOV could be represented by:
>
>x/25mpg + 3y/25mpg
>
>This means that if one out of every nine cars is HOV, you have
>equivalent pollution and fuel consumption rates.  You have significantly
>increased the number of people the road can handle, thus decreasing
>the need to increase taxes and pave over more of NVA.
>

Your equations have assumptions built in, but for the sake of
discussion I will accept them.  You are then right that a ratio of
one out of every nine cars in the HOV lane will have equivalent
pollution and fuel consumption rates to the previous situation.
However, this 1 out of nine then translates to 27.27% of single
occupancy vehicles converting to HOV-3.  Even granting for the
existence of car-poolers before HOV-3 came into existence, this is
a rather large number of people to have to begin to carpool and is
not even projected by the Dulles authority. 

>If the population and number
>of jobs on the Dulles corridor increases, which it surely must
>now that the new board chairman has declared that Fairfax is open
>for business (when was it closed?), then the percentage of cars
>which are HOV-3 will increase because that lane is horribly 
>underused (according to your own testimony) and the regular lanes
>are jammed, thus we will exceed the break even point and we
>will save gas and pollution.

You're forgetting the alternate route option, i.e. people do not *have* to
take the toll road anywhere.

>
>deserve.  I really don't understand your attitude, except by
>assigning qualities to your character which I don't assign
>without more evidence.

I really don't understand yours, but lets leave personal attacks
out of this.  If you have a point to make, make it without
(thinly) veiled references to other people's character.

>
>>
>>BTW, you say with a straight face that the problem is too many
>>cars!  This sounds like someone espousing the idea that the
>>solution to Washington's high murder problem is to reduce the
>>population.
>
>Although you were not serious, overpopulation of the D.C.
>area is the cause of many problems here.

Since you brought the discussion into the serious arena, can I
count on you to tell the next victim's mother that her son or
daughter's death was her fault because they contributed to the
overpopulation of D.C?

-- 
John G. Ata - Technical Consultant | Internet:     ata@hfsi.com
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