From: dlp@zule.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan Pritchett - SunSoft Engineer)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.soc,dc.general
Subject: Re: HOV abolished!
Date: 12 Oct 92 17:39:46 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: zule

In article <1992Oct10.065513.9907@netcom.com>, tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich) writes:
|> Since this HOV thread began I started paying much closer attention to the
|> HOV lanes on the east side of San Francisco bay.
|> 
|> During the thickest rush hour, while traffic in the adjoining lanes is
|> bumper-to-bumper, there is about 1/4 _mile_ spacing between cars in the
|> HOV lanes. In every case I have watched there were no more than _two_
|> commuters per car. In many cases there was only one person breaking the
|> driving regulation.
|> 
This view is exactly the view I assume people, gridlocked in the non-HOV
lanes must have when I go flying by with my commuting partner. Of course
we only drive together 1 day/week because the rest of the week we ride
our bikes to work (16+ miles each way before you say, "I wish I lived
close enough to ride my bike").

The point of HOV lanes is to give people an incentive to change their
behavior to one that is more environmentally friendly. In the bay
area it is painfully obvious that we cannot keep adding highways to
handle single occupancy vehicles. We build new roads and add lanes
and they are gridlocked the same year they open.

Instead of complaining about being stuck in the slow moving traffic,
find someone to ride with you. Or are you going to be one of the hard
core folks that waits for employers to charge for parking (coming
real soon now) and gas taxes to increase above your threshold of pain
before you do a simple thing like find a friend to share a ride with.
I've heard about how hard this is for the last 7 years while I've been
doing it for 80% of my car commutes (yes over the last 7 years).

|> It is always nice to know that there are people out there who are more
|> than willing to take our money and supply goods and services to someone
|> else. And if they can quote "for the public good" as reason to exibit
|> their own biases they consider themselves saints.
|> 
I feel the same way. Given that studies show that if gas taxes were
to be the sole form of financing for highways that gas would cost $4.00/gal
in the bay area, I think everyone in a car is getting a free ride from
those of us that find a different way to get to work.

|> HOV lanes are an abomination and should be abolished everywhere.
|> 
Seems to be a matter of opinion. I feel that cars are museum pieces that
might be useful for a weekend drive once/month, but have no real practical
application in our congested and polluted cities.

This is probably the same argument that people using horse drawn carriages
had against cars a few decades ago. Sorry, but rather than giving up
more square footage to single occupancy vehicles, we should be putting in more 
HOV lanes and turning gridlocked 2 lane roads that lack bike access into 1 
lane gridlock roads with adequate leeway for bikes.


Dan Pritchett               | ARPA/Internet: dlp@zule.Eng.Sun.COM
SunSoft Desktop Prod. Tools | GEnie: D.PRITCHET3
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I used to think that I was cool.
Running around on fossil fuel.
Until I saw what I was doing.
Was driving down the road to ruin.
            James Taylor